


The Good Stars

by dynamicsymmetry



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Rewrite, Demisexuality, Depression, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Male-Female Friendship, No Seriously I Cannot Begin To Emphasize How Slow This Burn Is, Older Man/Younger Woman, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Child Abuse, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Trauma, Very Very Slow Burn, very slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-01-30 19:18:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 33
Words: 144,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12659766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: The world has gone to hell, the dead are walking, and Daryl Dixon is focused purely on keeping himself and his brother alive - until he performs a possibly foolish act of rescue, which will have consequences far greater and further-reaching than he ever could have imagined.





	1. the first of the ascension

**Author's Note:**

> I had this idea this past weekend when I was in San Antonio for World Fantasy Con and everything was pretty weird anyway, and my brain was like why the fuck would you ever consider this insanity and the next thing I knew I was writing the first chapter so here we are. 
> 
> Most of my stuff actually doesn't start out that ambitious. It develops into something bigger. Here, I'm setting out to do something incredibly and even stupidly ambitious right from the start, which is to rewrite as much of the show as I can through the lens of the relationship between these two characters (pretty sure it's been done before, yeah, but every attempt is going to be its own thing and this is mine). 
> 
> I'm, like, scared to even start this, because I have a terror of failure and of letting things wither. But hey, Howl hasn't died yet. So bottom line: This is nuts as an undertaking and I promise only to do my best. 
> 
> Before we get started, a couple of caveats:
> 
> \- This starts during the s1 timeline and, assuming I manage to keep it going, will proceed roughly according to the rest of the show. However, I _am_ playing a bit fast and loose with events and timings. There will be some divergences and some things may shift around, as well as new factors introduced. This is an AU, so. Also my organizational grasp of time is not the best, and neither is my memory, so I promise I'm going to fuck things up. Again, I'm using the shield of this being an AU.
> 
> \- Yes, Beth is sixteen here (nearly seventeen). No, I'm not tagging this thing for underage. When I floated this idea on Tumblr I said it was going to be the slowest of slow burns and I very much meant that. 
> 
> If you care about inspiration, what kicked this idea into gear was Josh Malerman's fantastic novel _Bird Box,_ which I absolutely devoured over the last couple of days. This isn't actually much like that book, but it made me want to make this happen. 
> 
> Oh, and because music is a thing, [here's what ended up thematically tying this whole idea together,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go8NU7OEkys) and where the title comes from. It's perfect. The feel, the lyrics, and this - which is my favorite version - has dueling/dueting violins, which is appropriate for a number of reasons. Ugh, it's just so gorgeous.
> 
> Okay, let's get into it. Thanks so much for reading, and friendly reminder that when someone is doing something they're scared of, knowing that people _are_ reading and care is probably the single greatest motivator. Please please leave reviews/comments. Let me know what you think. Let me know what keeps you coming back, if you do. It helps me keep going.
> 
> ❤️

 

** Part 1: Wildfire  
**

  

> _Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?_  
>  _Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?_
> 
> —Walt Whitman, "Song of the Open Road"

 

 

_Go back._

He skids at the end of the hallway, grits his teeth. The floor is slick with blood and littered with bodies, it would be way the hell too easy to slip, and if he goes down - are there more around that corner? Did he get them all? This place is a fucking maze and it seems to be half shadow and half mirrors, and they could be anywhere. Could be yards away. Feet.

He's not scratched. Not bit. Yet. But the fucking _girl_ is screaming back there, beating on the viewing window, and without turning he can see her face jammed up against it, her blue eyes round and huge, face blotchy with tears, snot streaked across the glass.

In the last week or so, he's seen plenty of that kind of desperation. You have to be numb to it.

You have to find a way to make yourself numb.

He's stopped. Looking. To the left, the nursery and the window and the shadowy hall back down the way he came, cluttered with the remains of a poor attempt at a barricade, and more bodies. No good there for a whole host of tremendously exciting reasons. To the right, short sky bridge to the next wing of the hospital, and that's a great big funhouse of the unknown but it looks fairly clear from where he's standing and he's seen the signs.

_DISPENSARY_

And if this fucking girl could just stop fucking screaming it would be fucking amazing, because sweet _shit_ she has a set of lungs on her and even from the other side of the glass it's like a knife into his ear canal, colliding with his membranes and those tiny little jittery bones and shivering all down his spine. Middle of the day, light too bright. Can't _hear._

There are a number of variables at play and he is not in control of a single goddamn one of them.

 _So change that, you fuckin’ pussy,_ Merle hisses. Merle’s tone has that good old scornful guffaw looming behind it like a thundercloud, and it pisses him off enough to kick him into gear, because then he's swinging up the bow and pointing it straight at her, and instantly she's no longer screaming. She's stumbling back, mouth working, shaking her head slightly as if hysterical denial might save her.

He takes a single lunging step toward her. “Jesus, bitch, _would you fuckin’ shut UP._ ”

Her mouth closes so fast and so completely that he would swear he can hear the click of her teeth.

The silence that follows is almost like a solid thing, hits him in nearly the way her voice did - blunt instead of with an edge. He narrows his eyes and listens, and they come to him in a quiet chorus, bizarrely gentle.

Everywhere. They're fucking everywhere.

From beneath, through the floor. From above, through the ceiling. Through the windows.. They're about four stories up; out on the street, the dead gather. They swarm. They _flow;_ yesterday he stood on the roof of the Wells Fargo branch a few blocks away and stared down at them and thought of schools of fish. Excessively slow-moving, entirely graceless, but all according to some communal logic that he doubts any living creature could ever comprehend.

Maybe this is what happens when the most basic parts of your brain keep functioning as everything else dies and dribbles out your ears.

Okay, great, whatever, but how close? _How fucking close?_

Aside from the background, he can't hear anything. Fine. The ones below, he’ll deal with when it's time. For now he raises the bow again and turns on his heel, begins striding away from her, already shoving her into the unsalvageble pit of _behind_ even as she starts pounding on the glass and shrieking again-

 _What did you_ really _hear?_

It catches him totally off-guard and he stumbles, blinks owlishly into the sun. He's heard a lot of voices in his head since the world fell apart and the dead started walking, none of them remotely welcome even if usually they do happen to be correct, but this one is different. He doesn't know this one. Soft, strangely androgynous, deeply insistent.

Yeah, he's cracking the fuck up. That's not new. If he's honest, if he really has to be, on some level or another he's been cracking the fuck up for most of his life. He tightens his grip on the bow. He should be hauling his ass on out of here. There's nothing good to be found and a whole hell of a lot of _do not need._

_Think. You missed something. You heard it, but you missed it._

_You see a trail. It's all there. But if you miss the wrong thing, you miss everything. And what kind of dumbass do you look like then?_

He has no reason in the world to listen to this internal intruder, and every reason to disregard it along with everything else. Yet he's thinking. He's rolling back through his memory reel, turning up the volume, fingering through the sounds like cards in a drawer.

When he gets it, nausea lurches in the pit of his stomach and he lets out a shaking breath. Because no. Not back there. That's not his fucking problem. That's not his fucking _job._ He's not search and rescue. He's here for the shit he's here for, and his sole responsibility as far as that goes is to get it as soon as humanly possible, while he's still human.

While Merle is.

But it's not just that. He thinks about what that soft voice is telling him he has to do now - telling him by implication if not literally - and he can barely keep standing.

He knows what's in there with her. Behind that door. He knows why she looks the way she does, her cheeks brilliant crimson from weeping and screaming, her huge eyes bloodshot and half crazed. Christ knows how long she's been locked in, and he did note that a couple of the blood smears on the glass appeared to be on the inside rather than the outside, but if what's serving as her company could get at her, she would already have been _got_.

Whoever locked that door, they probably did her a favor. Likely she's survived as long as she has because she's safer in there than she would be anywhere else.

_So leave her, man, Jesus. The fuck’s wrong with you?_

A lot. A fuck of a lot is wrong. Because he's slinging the bow over his shoulder and whirling, stepping over a crumpled bloody heap that used to be a nurse and striding toward the nursery door.

Growls and groans. But still not close.

Except.

The door features a smaller window - a window in front of which something very bad and very messy evidentially happened, because when he peers through it he's peering through a film of blood and what looks like stuff that isn't blood, suspicious lumps of a pinkish hue. It's all on this side, and while he has no reason to thank anyone or anything for that, for some reason he's doing so as he bends and gropes on the floor for anything that seems sufficient for his needs.

This was, again, evidently the site of a cobbled-together barricade. It also evidently didn't work. Gurneys, carts, chairs, even a bed; all pack the hall but none of them are enough to keep anything back, at least nothing truly determined to break through.

Just behind it, two women in white coats slump against the wall, the wall itself painted with a wide fan of red. A pistol lies beside one woman’s thigh, and after only a second or two’s consideration, he leans down and snatches it up, tucks it in the waistband of his jeans.

The two bodies don't look particularly chewed on. Seems beyond belief but perhaps the smallest, cruelest mercies do exist.

Taking hold of one of the lighter chairs, he straightens, backs up, waves a hand at the window. “ _Get back._ ”

She's already doing as she's told, one hand against the glass and the other quivering at her side. She doesn't have a tremendous amount of space to work with - she's in the mini-hallway between the nursery entryway and another glass divider - but it's more than enough, and he doesn't give her more time; he slams the metal seat of the chair against the handle and lock, again, grunts and feels it give, and on the third impact the door pops wide with a _kachunk_ that bounces weirdly around the space.

Panting, he drops the chair. The girl is pressed against the far wall and gaping at him.

She's a fucking mess. She's even more of a mess than she seemed through the window. Her face, the blood suffusing it, the clear evidence of what might be hours of crying, but now also the wild blond tangle of her hair, and the blood spattered across her throat, her plain blue tank top, her collarbones, her upper arms. Dark blood. Old. The pattern - it doesn't look as if it came from her.

All the same. In two beats the bow is aimed at her again, and her hands are swinging up beside her head, a terrified little cry breaking out of her.

“You bit?”

She takes a breath, blank confusion flickering in her eyes. “What?”

“ _Are you bit?_ ” He takes a step forward, sighting down the bolt. For shit’s sake, if she made him break in here only to force him to end it like this… “You scratched? _Anywhere?”_

“I'm not bit,” she whispers. “I'm not scratched.”

“Don't you fuckin’ lie to me.”

“You can check me.” She lowers her hands, extends them palm-up. As she does, he sees - really for the first time - just how small she is, how young, slim and a little gawky in the way a girl’s body maintains when she's not that far past adolescence. Fuck’s sake, she's just a _kid,_ and he was going to simply leave her here. Maybe to starve.

Maybe to turn.

_Yeah, you’re goddamn right you was gonna. Lotta kids in the world not too long ago. Lot less of ‘em now. You gonna blubber like a fuckin’ baby for every single one?_

“I don't gotta check you.” It's quiet, and not as gruff as he was expecting, but he has no time to consider the implications of his own voice. He lowers the bow and reaches out a hand, and he's not going to devote any further consideration to how unbelievably stupid this is or the overall likelihood that he's just gotten them both killed anyway.  “We gotta go. Now.”

But she's not moving. She's casting a nervous glance though the second window, her teeth working at her bottom lip and her hands clenching into fists. “I can't just-”

“You can't just _what?_ ”

And he's grimly thankful that his exasperation is cloaking what he's really feeling, which is a miserable crawling horror that began out there and has followed him in here. He knows what she can't just do. He knows where that's going. What she's probably going to ask _him_ to do. Because maybe he just met her, maybe he knows fuck all about her, but in the time it took her to shoot that glance, he learned enough about her to know what she wants right now.

What she wants from him.

_What did you really hear?_

Through that pane of glass and the doorway that bisects it, the rows of little bassinets, barely more than outlines in the dimness. Between the rows on the floor, another uneven lump of a form, awkwardly sprawled. Nothing more than powder-blue cloth and a shock of red hair, except for the bare arm just barely visible beneath a metal frame, and the ragged black absence where flesh used to be.

He's looking at those things, he understands, so he doesn't have to look at what's in the bassinets.

_What did you hear?_

Voices. Tiny voices, raised in their own chorus. Ten. Maybe twenty. Hisses and growls, and other choked vocalizations that sound as if they've merely forgotten how to cry and are trying to remember.

“They were like that when I got here,” she says, low - low, and calm in a way that astonishes him. Almost cold. As if she's accepted it. As if a room full of living dead babies is simply now a normal feature of her existence. “ _She_ was here.” She nods at the corpse on the floor. “One of the others locked us in before they- before the fighting started. Maybe they didn't know about her. She didn't cry. She didn't scream. She gave me that.”

Another nod. Gleam on the floor by the door; he looks and sees that it's a scalpel, small and shining and utterly lethal. It's also not close. Maybe she dropped it earlier.

Maybe she threw it, when she grasped why it was being given to her.

“She said… She said _I can’t do it. Someone has to do it._ She asked me. She begged me. Then she took this long, sharp thing, like this needle, and she.” The girl swallows, looks down at her boots. “Through her eye. She's dead now.”

Dead. Dead, and didn't turn. She thought of that much, at least.

He wonders if he's going to have to lean against something after all. The wall. The doorframe. Anything he can find.

“How long ago was this?”

“I don't know. I think maybe it was yesterday. I'm… I’m really hungry. Thirsty.” She hasn't raised her head, but he doesn't miss the fresh, fierce bloom of red in her cheeks and ears. “I had to pee in the corner.”

Yes. She did. He can smell that too, under the blood and the decay that's come to permeate everything, so thick it almost doesn't bother him anymore. Beneath it, the sharp ammonia of urine, somewhat faded but unmistakable.

A lot of people are doing a lot of things they're not proud of.

Like right fucking now.

“We can't. We can't take the time. We gotta go.”

Her head jerks up. “Wait. You're gonna- We can't just _leave_ ‘em like this.”

“Bet your ass we can. Now.” He closes the last of the distance between them, seizes her upper arm. Possibly harder than he needs to. Possibly there's more than one reason for this, and none of them are simple or good. “Get movin’.”

“I _promised_ her!” She twists free and stares at him, and that eerie calm is gone from her voice, the madness creeping back into her eyes, and he thinks _You idiot, she's little but she’s dangerous, she's going to get you killed._ “I promised her, they're _babies,_ I _can’t._ ”

“You want me to leave _you?_ You wanna be on your own? Fine. You stay here, you do it.” He whirls, heads for the door, and wrestles back another wave of nausea that threatens to bend him double. Outside, the sunlight stabs into his optic nerves like a hangover. “I got places to be.”

Better. Better this way, if she doesn’t come. And he fulfilled whatever stupid, borderline suicidal obligation he talked himself into having. She's free. She can make her own stupid, borderline suicidal choices, and good luck to her.

Silence from her. Back in the hallway, the groans of the dead babies recede. The light from the skybridge hurts but beckons him. Maybe it'll be a few seconds of disinfectant. Maybe that'll be good, if useless.

Then. “ _Wait._ ”

He doesn't stop. She doesn't pause. The quick thump-clack of her boots on the tile and then she's drawing up alongside him, moving swiftly, casting a look up at him. In the corner of his vision he sees that her eyes are still wild, wild as the rest of her, but not crazed. She's sane.

She is so horrifically sane.

He doesn't return the look. Walks a bit faster. The walls and ceiling are opening into glass all around them. “Can you keep up?”

“Yeah.”

“Stay the fuck outta my way? Do what I tell you?”

“I will.”

He does look at her, then, this _child_ he's somehow picked up like a stray fucking dog, and something happens in his chest that he's never felt before and doesn't understand and hates with every fiber of his being. Because somehow he doesn't doubt her when she says these things. It would make far more sense to disbelieve her out of hand, disbelieve and dismiss this little blond girl who looks as if she's never had to fight a day in her life. Write her off as a burden. Possibly worse. It would be the only reasonable thing to do.

But she's sane.

And she left the babies. She found it in herself to do that.

He's not sure that says anything comforting about her. Not at all.

“You do anythin’ that might get me killed, and I mean _any fuckin’ thing-_ ” At last he swings his gaze around and fixes her with it, and hers is waiting there for him, and while her body is still trembling as she moves, her eyes are absolutely steady, no matter how broken with red the whites are. That blue is pristine and the black is a perfect pool of ink.

“You do anythin’ that even _might_ get me killed,” he repeats, softer, “and I will fuckin’ scrape you off my boot like shit. You got that?”

No words. She doesn't look away. She nods.

He hates this because he believes her. He hates it because he's afraid, so terribly afraid, that she'll survive this. Survive him, and the next few hours of whatever this place puts them both through.

And then she’ll have to survive what's out there.

 


	2. who the history books will blame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're probably wondering how I got here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, don't take the rapidity of this update as any kind of precedent for how this will go. Still, it's cool that it happened. And while this is just a flashback chapter I'm pretty pleased with how it came out. 
> 
> Thanks so much for the response so far, folks. It's very encouraging to see that people are behind this. Especially since look do you understand that I'm trying to rewrite the ENTIRE FUCKING SHOW HERE, DO YOU KNOW HOW TERRIFYING THAT IS
> 
> One chapter at a time. One. At. A. Time. 
> 
> ❤️

“Yo, man, you seein’ this?”

Daryl Dixon isn't seeing much of anything, at least not with any great degree of focus. The world has been transitioning into a pleasant blur for the last hour or so, and he's content that it should remain that way. Merle is off by the pool tables, cheating his lying heart out - just as much for the fun of it as the money - and it's almost always better on these runs to let Merle sink or swim on his own. Hang back, wait to see if he's needed to help beat some asshole down, nurse a buzz, maybe ease into a little more than that. He's well into _little more_ territory. He's well past _little_ and straight on into _more_.

Friday night. This place is shit, and it's packed. Reek of stale booze and smoke is joined by the reek of stale sweat and cheap perfume. The floor is both sticky and gritty under his boots as he leans against the bar and gestures at the bartender, who is oblivious to him, grinning like a dog at one of the women who just walked in. She's tottering on impractically high heels, big tits jiggling just beneath a dangerously low neckline.

She purses puffy red lips, lifts her cigarette and blows smoke into the guy’s face. All the men around her laugh uproariously. The guy simply grins wider.

“Hey! I said, you _seein’_ this shit?”

It's the man next to him, slapping at his forearm. Daryl fights the urge to slap back, and harder. He doesn't know this prick, doesn't know why this prick is talking to him, and would prefer to be left alone in his blur. Interactions when the night has reached this stage almost always amount to fights, and unless Merle gets into something and hollers for him - which, let’s be real about this, he probably will - he's not feeling inclined toward one.

The man - little, toothy, protruding eyes and long nose, looks like a fucking rat if the truth be told - is pointing at the TV in the corner over the bar. It's inaudible over the thunderous grind of the guitars coming through the shitty speakers, but when Daryl forces himself to focus, it's visible enough. Local news. Shot from a helicopter. Night. Now? Chaotic mass of people in the middle of the street, seething in and out of each other.

More than seething. Some of them are running.

Breaking loose from the clot. Others breaking out too, pursuing - slower, staggering oddly. Flashes of blue and red are muddling the light, mutilating shapes and angles. Just at the edge of the picture, a police cruiser is visible. One of the runners trips, goes sprawling, struggles to get up on what looks like possibly a wounded ankle. Makes it another few feet before one of the shambling figures catches up and, with almost comical slowness, drags the runner to the ground.

Daryl watches, first bemused and then dully confused, as the one begins to rip the other apart.

He blinks. Blood sprays glistening black across the pavement. There's a flash of a gleaming wet tangle of reddish tubing, more gushes of black-red. A lot of that, streaming, pooling. The one who did the dragging is crouched over its prey, stuffing what Daryl distantly recognizes as human intestines into its mouth.

Blue-red. Blue-red. Blue-red. A new set of running figures, this time in uniform, raising guns. Closing in with shocking rapidity. The crouching figure looks up, starts to rise, drops like a sack of bricks as the back of its head explodes into reddish mist.

From the crowd, more figures stagger out to meet them.

The feed cuts very abruptly back to the studio. A well made-up anchorwoman in a nicely tailored blazer is staring gray-faced at the camera. She shuffles her papers, pushes trembling fingers at a coil of her black hair. She doesn't appear to be saying anything.

“People losin’ their damn minds,” proclaims the man beside him, raising his bottle of Miller Lite in something like a salute. “Goin’ fuckin’ insane. Gonna butcher each other. You even surprised? Like they say, man. Just like they say.”

Somehow Daryl locates a few words, fumbles them into a kind of order, sends them out on a slurring grunt. “What does who say?”

What he just saw on that fucking TV… No one else seems to be paying any attention to it. And he’s drunk. No two ways about it. He's drunk and he's getting drunker. Who the fuck knows what he just saw. Maybe the rat prick tricked his brain somehow, encouraged him to see what he thought he should be seeing with talk like that. Maybe he didn't see anything.

Maybe.

“Y’know. Them. All’a them.” The man waves a dismissive hand at the world in general, wiggles his ratty nose. “End Times’re upon us, right? Great Star Wormwood or some shit. The sky is gonna fall, the seas are gonna turn to blood, the graves are gonna open up and the dead are gonna walk the earth. Been comin’ a long time.”

Daryl glances over his shoulder. Merle is in heated argument with two men who have more than enough size on him to loom. Merle doesn't look alarmed, but Merle only rarely looks alarmed, and hardly ever when it's appropriate.

Might have to make a strategic exit soon.

He looks back at the man. “You ain't freaked out or nothin’?”

“Nah.” Toothy rodent grin. “Like I said. Been comin’ a long time. We’re due, friend. We are more than fuckin’ due.”

Later, Daryl will suppose that makes as much sense as any other explanation on offer.

~

The thing about the world falling apart is that it happens slowly and quickly all at once, and it can happen almost without you noticing until it's happened and you're standing in the blood and the rubble and wondering where the fuck it all went, that world you got so used to. Even if it was fucking awful, you stare at what's left and you feel this numb sense of loss. You feel this absence that you don't know what to do with. It's not grief. It's just emptiness.

Daryl knows this, because he's felt it what seems like about a million times in one form or another. He looks back and it's as if the years are one of those boards he used for target practice as a kid, Pop standing behind him swigging back gulp after gulp of rotgut and cackling abuse at him as he consistently struck outside the inner painted circles. He's so useless. Couldn't hit his own fucking foot if he tried. Couldn't hit a fat-ass cow staked to the ground. Made him do it again and again, made him do it with a gun but the crossbow was always best - made him practice until every muscle in his arms was trembling and on fire. Made him practice until he was too strong to be bothered by it.

At twelve, Daryl Dixon could lay out a boy twice his age with one well-placed punch. Take out his front teeth. He didn't. He fought to keep from doing it. He learned to have shitty, clumsy fights to avoid the much worse fights he could have, the ones he was afraid of, the ones where he might see what he could really do. It was the gun and the bow, too, and much more the bow; late at night after dear old Dad passed out in front of the TV in his sweat-stained, motheaten La-Z-Boy, he crept outside and by the light of the moon he shot bolt after bolt into that board until he hit the center circle every damn time. Hit it tight and reliable, and without even thinking about it. Alone with himself, he _was_ that bolt, and the circle was his father’s face, and with every single shot he hit that monstrous cocksucker right between the eyes.

Always wanted to throw up after. Because he was fucked up, knew he had been forever, but he had enough perspective even as a kid to know that fantasizing about murdering your own father is Not Okay no matter how much of a piece of shit he is.

He would have asked Merle about it, if Merle had been there. No one else, though. Not a word.

He's pretty sure Merle would have gotten it. But Merle was off killing _real_ people, so.

Anyway. Anyway: The image of that board stuck with him, so pockmarked with holes by the end that he couldn't believe it didn't just fall apart - until one day it did. Shot neat through the center split it in half, and he watched both halves drop into the dirt and felt a species of loss that he never did understand.

Somehow it was everything. The world cracked in two. By then he was alone with only his father, and after that board broke, everything was somehow different.

Three years later, an eighteen-year-old kid with a short temper and no high school diploma nor any hope of ever getting one, he slung a pack and his bow over his shoulder and walked into the woods and never went back. Found a road, thumbed a lift to Marietta where he met a dishonorably-discharged Merle in a biker bar that catered to the friendly local Neo-Nazis, and that was that.

He was twenty-seven when he heard that dear old Dad took an accidental bullet in the neck on a hunting trip with his cousin. Cousin Lou was never fond of dear old Dad. They never did get along. Weird that they were hunting together. Weird that Lou, always a good shot and a good hunter in his own right, would make such a mistake. Word around town was they had gotten into a thing over a woman a few weeks back.

Oh, well.

Sitting in the flickering TV-dimness and staring blankly at the stained motel room wall while Merle and a hooker snored in the other bed.

Not grief. Emptiness.

Almost ten years since then and he's watching that board break all over again. Watching the pieces tumble. It happens quickly and with bizarre smoothness, and at first mostly on the TV, with more scenes like the one in the bar and more news anchors blinking nervously at the camera. Then looking shellshocked in that exhausted way that comes when horror after horror smacks you in the face and it's no longer remarkable.

He knows that look so well.

Then it's happening right in front of his eyes.

The first time he actually sees it, it starts as a meth-fueled street fight that ends in a man beaten to death against a dumpster, with the other stumbling back, raising bloody fists, looking wildly around at the gathered crowd with his dilated pupils erasing his irises, and stuttering _I didn’t mean to, oh god, y’all saw it, I didn't fuckin’ mean to, oh god, oh shit, I didn’t-_

Then the dead man was tearing his throat out in gory strips and chunks of flesh, jets of arterial blood, and the really impressive thing was how the dead man’s shattered jaw didn't appear to be getting in his way.

As well as, you know, being dead.

The crowd scattered. There actually weren't that many screams. Everyone knew what they were seeing by then. Everyone knew what it meant.

Merle pulled his gun and took down the shambling dead thing with two shots to the head. Didn't yell triumph. Didn't whoop self-congratulations, like he would do pretty consistently once shooting dead men in the head was a thing he started doing multiple times a day. He simply stood there, lowered the gun, and the sigh he released was one Daryl never heard in his life.

Tired. It was so tired, that sigh. Daryl thought maybe it was saying _here we go again._

Here we go.

Here we go with the curfews. Here we go with the soldiers in the streets. Here we go with the military quarantines. Here we go with the endless traffic jams as people stuff their cars full of whatever they can and get the hell out of whatever dodge they happen to live in. Here we go with the flyers from the CDC with the usual useless instructions - _stay indoors, wash your hands, don't attempt to care for any sick relatives or friends but instead notify the proper authorities, if you come into contact with anyone who appears to be infected report immediately to your local FEMA command center for treatment._

Here we go with the overflowing hospitals, the shaky-cam footage of hallways crowded with people groaning on floors until those people start getting up and trying to eat each other, blood splattered on the wall, on the camera as it falls. Here we go with newscast after newscast going dark, with CNN and FOX and MSNBC all transforming into 24/7 government emergency broadcasts. Here we go with the cell phone video that people manage to sneak onto the net or onto what remains of the net, Twitter and YouTube channels and corners of the dark web that label themselves as part of some kind of _resistance_ \- journalists lined up against walls and summarily riddled with bullets.

Here we go with the holes in those walls. In all the walls. Here we go with the holes in what people say, in what they think, in what they know, and here we go with the holes those people leave behind when they're not there anymore.

Here we go with the holes in the world.

He observes all of this with that weird, familiar numbness that descends like a curtain, separates him from the inferno rising all around him. Merle seems fine. Hell, Merle seems to be thriving. Merle has gone full commando, is breaking into gun stores, is walking around with fucking grenades. Daryl looks at him and thinks _bro, it’s like you were made for how things are now._

Here we go. It feels almost natural. Like it was coming for a long time. Like we were due.

Camped on a hillside not far from the car-choked road, the light of their fire overswept and overwhelmed by the plumes of flame that engulf Atlanta and the deafening roar of the bombers overhead. Merle is laughing and toasting the view with a looted bottle of bourbon that probably used to command the price of both of Merle’s corneas, and Daryl is just _sitting_ there against a tree, smoke in his lungs and his hands dangling between his knees, watching the whole world burn.

The board is shot so full of holes that it can't help but fall apart.

It's not grief.

It's just emptiness.

 


	3. it's got me right under the thumb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With this girl, Daryl knows he's probably getting more than he's bargaining for - especially given that he's not even bargaining. But he's still not ready for how much more he's getting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had a three-hour-each-way car ride today to see an Antares rocket launch from the Orbital facility in Wallops, VA - which didn't end up happening because of some dumbass pilot who wasn't listening to the FAA and wandered into RESTRICTED AIRSPACE, but hey, I did get to write most of each way so have another chapter. 
> 
> As usual I'm utterly failing at responding to comments, but given that I'm using that time in part for more writing, I trust you don't mind too much. Just know that your feedback and encouragement means so much to me, especially as I continue to be intimidated by the sheer potential length and breadth of this thing.
> 
> A side note, just to be clear about some stuff before we go any further: _This is not a fix-it fic._ I'm not in this to correct canon. I personally love 80% of the canon and have made peace with most of the rest of it. Given that, there may be stuff from canon that you hate, that I nevertheless stick to. There may be stuff from canon that you love, that I nevertheless ditch. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that you trust me, if you do, but just be aware that I may not make you completely happy here and I may even piss you off. I'm doing this because I think it's a great big interesting What-If, not because I feel the need to repair something.
> 
> That said, I promise to try to do what I always try to do, which is tell the best story I can, for as long as I can. I myself don't have a clear idea of what that story is going to end up looking like. We'll get to find out together.
> 
> ❤️

 On the other end of the skybridge, through the double doors, it's clear.

For a given value of _clear._ There are bodies, there's just a lot fewer of them. There's blood, there's a lot just less of it. Everything is more decomposed. Whatever happened here, it happened longer ago, and while that should be reassuring, it actually edges him back in the direction of freaking out, because _why?_ What happened? What kept that contagion of madness from spreading from there to here?

In all likelihood he's never going to know, so _let it the fuck go._ Chaos is the one natural law when things fall apart, and that means some people die and some don’t, some buildings burn to the ground and some don’t, some monsters slaughter each other and some don’t, and there's no rhyme or reason to any of it. There's no pattern, and you drive yourself fucking crazy looking for one.

Sometimes there's no track, and you have to stop trying to see one.

There's this girl, though. And she is indeed keeping up with him, her strides long and her panting minimal, her eyes locked straight ahead. That eerie calm seems to have returned to her, and eerie or not, he’ll take it. Take her too, apparently, and fuck knows why, and he's a dumbass because only now is he considering what Merle is going to say about this. And he knows _exactly_ what Merle is going to say about this, because even when the world no longer adheres to any recognizable patterns, Merle is good and reliable.

_What the fuck, man, what kinda stray bitch you draggin’ around all of a sudden? Like maybe you fed her or somethin’, let me guess, now you wanna ask me if you can keep her?_

_Don't tell me you’re finally thinkin’ about scorin’ yourself a piece of ass_ now, _of all times._

That gets his jaw clenched so hard his head aches, all at once and with no specific cause he can think of. He just. He really, really does not want Merle to fucking _say_ that, and he will. Bet the whole damn world, or what's left of it, he will.

And then Merle might start looking at her himself, mightn’t he, and suddenly Daryl is looking down the barrel of potentially having to keep his big brother off a girl who doesn't look a day over fifteen, which he intellectually knows is pretty fucking horrifying… but that's life now, isn't it?

Wasn't it always?

_Why would you? Why would you bother? You just fucking met her, why is it your business?_

He cannot fucking do this, and yet here he is.

They edge together around a clot of corpses, so mangled and rotten that it's impossible to even count them let alone tell one from the other. It must stink unbelievably, but at some point he stopped caring. Stopped smelling it much at all, that sickening reek of decay. Like that part of his brain simply burned out. And hey, to be honest all the better.

Around another corner. Another sign, a blessed arrow, and it doesn't look like he has to head up or down any more floors. Which is great, because what with the limited sightlines and varying levels, the stairwells around here are deathtraps and he's into minimizing his time there. He's slipped back into the mental inventory he’ll need to do, the shopping list he's come with. Antibiotics, whatever he can find. Them mostly, but also painkillers would be awesome. Opioids particularly so. Probably too much to hope for many of those, but hey, _springs eternal_ or whatever.

Fast. Faster. He's on a clock and he has no idea how long it'll keep ticking.

“Thanks.”

He manages not to jump. Shoots her a glare as they round another corner. Her silence was vastly preferable. “For what?”

The look she gives him is a mild combination of surprise and confusion. “For not leavin’ me behind.”

He grunts. “Might wish I did.”

 “Why?” More confusion. “I was gonna… I was probably gonna _die_ in there.” Her voice quavers at the end, and somehow he doubts it's only the prospect of death. It’s death _in there,_ in that infants’ tomb, dying surrounded by a utter perversity of everything life should be. In truth, he has no idea how to be anything but sympathetic.

Answering her was still a mistake, and so is keeping it up. This is not his day for wise decisions, and why break a streak? “‘cause you’re just gonna die out there instead of in here. You seen what it’s like? You got any idea?”

“I've seen it,” she says quietly. “I saw it before I got here. I walked though it to get here.”

He shoots her another glance, this time longer - studying her, as much as he can in a few seconds. She’s once more staring straight ahead, her features tight and her neck tense. Somehow it didn't occur to him that she had to get _into_ that room, that she wasn't fucking born there but had to _come from_ somewhere, and three days ago is when the last lights went out and the bombs fell.

That suggests some very strange and frankly worrying possibilities.

“The fuck was you doin’ there, anyhow?”

“I’m not from here. The city.” She pauses. “A friend of mine has - _had_ \- a baby. She was here when it all started goin’ bad. I wanted to see if I could help.” Another pause, and her voice drops, that quaver slipping back into it. “I wanted to see if she was alive.”

 _Oh._ A lot more suddenly makes sense. And a lot more is suddenly pretty awful. It's easy to come to certain conclusions, and once more he wonders at how _sane_ this girl appears to be. “She wasn't.”

“No.”

She's silent for what feels like a long time. He knows what's coming next. So:

“The baby was in there.”

What the hell do you say to something like that? He's never good at knowing what to say at the best of times; he looks at her again and her expression is positively cold, and it's cold in a way that indicates significant effort. She could be breaking down. She's not. In the face of the literally unspeakable, she’s holding it together. Christ only knows for how long, but she is.

Nothing to say to it. So move on. He clears his throat, shifts the bow in his hands. There are other questions. “Were you here when-”

Growl. Not loud, but he halts in his tracks and flicks out a hand to stop her. No need; she's already stopped, breath held, shaking slightly.

He listens. She lets him listen. That's good. He's more surprised than perhaps he should be, and finally he tips his chin ahead at the hall. “It's down there, one of the rooms. Not close. You lemme go first.”

She nods, takes a step behind him. She said yes to both his conditions, he thinks as he proceeds at half speed, quiet as he can. She said she could keep up, and she has, and she said she would do what he told her, and she is, and she’s done both without protest or even hesitation. It hits him, then: On some level he assumed that she didn't know the stakes. He assumed that she didn't fully grasp what could happen to her and how she can stay alive now.

What she’s seen, if she’s telling the truth… Shit, how could she _not_ know those things? How could she _not_ grasp them?

And she didn't say anything about anyone else being with her before now. Possibly she just didn't see fit to mention them, maybe she had an entire fucking team of bodyguards, but maybe. Maybe.

Is it actually possible that she's stayed alive until now, in this city, entirely on her own?

Can't wonder. No attention to spare for that; it doesn't help him here. The growling and hissing is coming from a room to the right, one ahead, and he raises the bow, listening so hard to all the other rooms that his ears are just about bleeding. All he needs: one of the rare bizarrely quiet ones to stumble through a doorway and onto him.

Onto her.

Nothing. He's getting nothing. Out of the corner of his eye, a couple more bodies piled on the floor of the room to his left, but no movement. And now the doorway on the right is in view, and there’s-

It's in bed.

It's just… in a bed. Strapped into it, wrestling weakly with the binds, turning its head to look at them and snarling in a way that sounds far too much like _Holy shit,_ finally, _I thought no one would ever come, get in here and cut me loose._ Geeks can’t feel relief, he's all but certain that they feel nothing except endless dogged hunger, but even so.

Then she's stepping past him, moving before he can tell her to keep her stupid ass back, and that's when he really sees.

It used to be a girl. It used to be a girl not that much older than she is. A girl with long brown hair gone stringy and filthy, her face contorted and her skin sloughing off, and at her wrists and ankles and forearms, she's rubbed the skin and flesh away in her constant struggling, almost down to the bone. The sunlight breaks through half-drawn curtains and spreads across her, her stained powder blue hospital gown, and gives the wetter rotten places on her a horrific dull gleam.

He's silent, gazing at the tableau. At the one living girl, standing very still.

It's been such a long time since he looked at one of these things and felt anything like genuine pity. He didn't want to. It was good that he stopped. It’s pissing him off that it’s happening again now.

He sighs. “C’mon.”

“What?” She looks over her shoulder, frowning. “No.”

And he just got through giving her credit for doing what she was told. He blinks at her. “The fuck you just say to me?”

“I said no.” She shakes her head. Still so calm, and still trembling. “I’m not leavin’ her like this. I left the others, I’m not doin’ it this time.”

This is infuriating. This is way more infuriating than it should be. “Girl, I swear to Jesus, I will walk outta here right now.”

“So go, then.”

She’s crazy. He had her totally wrong, totally ass-backwards. She is completely fucking crazy, and she's standing in front of him and saying that she's willing to basically commit suicide over a dead girl who, as far as he can tell, she doesn't know and owes nothing to. She's saying that. It's happening.

What's not happening is he's not walking out. Not right now.

“She’s dead,” he says, and once again his own tone surprises him. Flatly irritated, but not angry. Not as angry as he feels. More than anything he sounds tired. “It don’t matter.”

“It does matter.” She points at his bow. “And it costs you nothin’.”

 _Costs me a damn bolt,_ he almost says, but in fact it doesn't, and he's pretty sure she knows that. Wear and tear, sure, but he doubts this will be enough to break it. He simply gapes at her, wheels turning uselessly, unable to admit anything to himself other than that she's right. Not that it matters, because it does fucking not, but that it costs him nothing.

Nothing but time.

“Fuckin’ _bullshit,_ ” he mutters, as he steps forward, takes aim, lets it go.

The silence that follows is a solid thing, and once more all he can do is stand in it with her, looking at what he's done. The other wing of the place was noisy as hell, constant groans and growls, but here, all is quiet. All is dead. Truly dead, now, and he's filled with the strange certainty that if he closed his eyes, he might be able to imagine that it's all over. That everywhere the dead are dead, and it's done.

No. He waves a hand at the bolt protruding from the geek’s forehead. “You wanted it, you go get it.”

She moves without a word, goes to the bedside and leans across the body. He does finally spy some hesitation there, when she leans and when she reaches, but he's not about to fault her for that. Again, that tiredness. He just wants to get out of here. He just wants to be finished with it, to the extent that he ever can be.

She returns to him, wiping the bolt on her already bloody jeans, and hands it to him without a word.

He takes it, lets out another rough sigh. “Happy?”

“No,” she says softly, and when he turns and stalks out of the room she merely follows him.

~

It's too easy, the rest of the way. It's easy in a way he's learned the world has means of making you pay for later. Hell with it; there's fuck-all he can do about it. Another short couple of hallways, mostly devoid of corpses, and they arrive at the place he's spent the last two hours fighting his way up to.

She reads the plaque by the door, mouths the word silently. Comprehension washes across her face. “You need medicine.”

“Yeah.” Something like that.

“I can help you carry it.” She looks up at him, clearly a little uncertain. “If you need.”

Unease twinges in his gut. There's something about that look, that uncertainty, that he doesn't like. She knows fuck all about him, but she has to have gathered by now that he's no hero come riding in at the very last minute to save her ass, no knight in armor shining or otherwise. He's not _kind._ She’s proven stubborn, proven willing to call his bluff as far as leaving her goes - and fine, okay, he was probably kind of bluffing - but she's also looking for ways to make herself useful to him, and maybe she's looking even harder after her stunt back there. She's looking for ways to make him want to keep her around.

There's no reason for that to strike him as unsavory. It's utterly reasonable. And yet it does. Once again he finds himself thinking of Merle, and of what Merle might say.

Might do.

He grunts. “With what?” He gestures in the direction of her waist. “You got those bullshit girl pockets.”

She actually gives him a tiny wry smile at that, and no argument. Instead she turns and walks quickly to a gurney pressed against a wall, scoops up a thin pillow tangled in its sheets, and yanks off the cover, holding it up. _See?_

He nods, a little sullenly. Not much else to do. No denying it's an idea, and no denying that it's a good one.

Whatever.

He turns and tries the knob, fully ready to kick the door down - and it turns easily and swings open.

Windowless room. He pauses, listening again, fumbling in his pocket for his flashlight. It doesn't flick on immediately, doesn't even flick on after a couple of shakes, and he grimaces when it finally does. First, because he's going to have to locate another one as soon as he possibly can and it's one more fucking thing to worry about, and second, because the room isn't empty.

A gray-haired man is slumped against one of the shelves, facing the door. A couple bottles of pills are open and tossed aside, white and orange tablets scattered across the floor like seed. Other than the pills, this is a scene he's gotten so used to. He's seen it so many times. It’s normal. Shit, it’s almost boring at this point.

Gun loose beside the man’s limp hand, blood and flecks of brain fanned out over the boxes behind and beside his head. The side of his skull is a cratered mess of black gore.

The girl hisses, and though she's not touching him he can feel her muscles lock up. She's seen some shit, no doubt. Just not enough to make her cease to care.

She’ll get there. If she lives.

“He-” she whispers, and he finishes the thought for her.

“Opted out. Yeah.” He steps through the door and up to one of the other shelves, scanning the labels, and he doesn't give the body another look. Part of not caring is not dwelling. You see it, you acknowledge it, you move the fuck on. “Get goin’, I don't wanna stick around.”

He's been expecting the place to be, if not cleared out, severely looted. Every other place they've hit has been; not hospitals but pharmacy after pharmacy, empty cartons of Sudafed strewn across the floor. Beyond stupid when he took a few seconds to think about it, because who the fuck is cooking meth at the end of the world?

Merle might, for one.

The names stream by before his eyes, illuminated by flickering light. _Gemifloxacin. Ciprofloxacin. Amoxicillin. Lincomycin. Cefalexin._ Other than amoxicillin and cefalexin none of them are familiar, but they're all together, and there's a rhythm to the vowels and consonants that makes him reasonably sure about what they share in common. Two bottles of amoxicillin goes into his pockets, as well as two or three others he doesn't bother to give a second look.

“What’re you needin’?” The shadows shift as she moves closer to him, her blond hair bleached white in the flashlight’s glow. “You- Oh, antibiotics?”

Grunt. “Couple other things.”

“Like what? I’ll find ‘em.”

He shoots her a look. “I only got one flashlight.”

“So just give me whatever you don't wanna carry.” She holds out the open pillowcase, and he thinks absurdly of a kid trick-or-treating. _What’re you supposed to be, honey? Oh, just the fall of human civilization. Well, isn't that cute._

If he laughs, she's going to ask him why, and he’ll have to come up with some kind of answer.

Instead he tosses another three bottles of whateveracillin into her pillowcase and moves on.

Another blur of lengthy names he can barely pronounce let alone identify, and then two thirds of the way around the room he finds them. These words, he knows, and God’s honest truth is that while Merle explicitly sent him here for the antibiotics, it's this stuff that his big brother really wants.

_Morphine. Codeine. Oxycodone. Fentanyl._

She's quiet next to him, a shuffling little ghost, but he can sense her eyes on him. So what the fuck? Why should he be feeling like she's judging him? Why _should_ she be judging him? Merle’s in pain. When he left, Merle was cursing up a storm, hissing each syllable through clenched teeth as he wrapped the bandage around and around his wrist and forearm. With the sheer ugliness of what was under that bandage, some codeine will probably be just what the doctor ordered.

Or would order, if doctors were still a thing.

He hazards a glance. Her face is unreadable. His imagination. Has to be, he thinks as he swats codeine and fentanyl into the pillowcase. She might not even know what the fucking names are.

“Who’s hurt?”

He pauses in the act of reaching for a box of hydrocodone. “Huh?”

“This. What you're gettin’.” She lifts the pillowcase. “Stuff for pain, stuff for infections. Unless you're thinkin’ ahead, someone's hurtin’ and someone’s worryin’ about infections, and I don’t think it's you.”

He stares at her for a long moment, jaw working. Moment he likely doesn't have to spend on her. “Why’s it your damn business?”

“It's not.” She shrugs. “I'm just askin’.”

Why not tell her? She’ll find out anyway. Again, assuming she lives that long. He releases another grudging sigh. He’s been doing a lot of sighing lately. “‘s my brother.”

“Somethin’ happen to him?”

He rolls his eyes. “Nah, he just wants this shit for the hell of it.” Which, for about half of it, would probably be true even without what's gone so horribly wrong. “We was climbin’ down an elevator shaft. He took a fall. Busted his arm.” He points to the outside of his left wrist with the flashlight. “Bone tore through the skin a bit right here.”

“Jeez.” She bares her teeth in a hard wince. “That's real nasty. He know how to get it back in? Splint it?”

“Yeah, he-” He stops. Because the truth is that he's not sure. Merle was bandaging the thing, but that falls short of anything he would consider a _splint,_ and the bone itself…

“I could maybe help.”

He scoffs. But everything in him is perking up, and he's hoping she can't tell. Who is she kidding? She can't even be out of high school. “You some kinda fuckin’ doctor, girl?”

“My daddy’s a vet. I've helped him with stuff.” Another shrug. “I don't know, like, a lot, but I can do some things.”

Again, making herself useful. Making herself seem valuable, worth keeping alive. She's smaller than him, weaker, probably not able to fight too effectively if at all. It's a smart strategy.

 _Or,_ that unfamiliar voice murmurs, _maybe she really just wants to help._

“We’ll see,” he mutters, clicking the flashlight off and heading for the door. “Yeah. We’ll see.”

~

Getting out stays easy. So of course they do end up having to pay.

There's no fighting their way to the nearest stairwell, and once they reach it, there's no fighting their way down it. One geek near the bottom, shoving itself awkwardly forward from where it's been wedged in between two exposed pipes; not hard to take care of that one, and the girl barely flinches. Hangs back and lets him do his thing. He's coming around to the idea of her not being completely crazy after all, but instead operating according to her own peculiar cost-benefit logic, which may simply not map to his own. Which he doesn't give a shit about, provided she continues to a) not get him killed, and b) not make him want to kill her.

So far so good. For the most part.

Out the fire exit at the bottom of the stairwell - _ALARM WILL SOUND,_ except it never will again - and into the bright sunshine and the somewhat less rancid air. Only somewhat; it may no longer be bothering him overmuch, but he’s keenly aware of the fact that the stench of decay permeates everything, touches everywhere. Like _them,_ because there is no longer anywhere they're not, these staggering creatures populating the streets and sidewalks, moving like drunks in the smallest hours of a Sunday morning. Weaving their way home to hide their shame from the good churchgoing folk. Except this is broad daylight, and so far as he's been able to tell, the _good folk_ haven't survived.

Moving cautiously around the side of the building toward the gate of the rear lot, he returns to studying her from the corner of his eye. Most. Most of them haven't survived.

_Shit._

Through the gate, and the street is, still, mostly clear. Nothing close enough to be too much of a threat. But he pauses, considering, and when she turns back to him, a question in her eyes, he reaches around to the small of his back and pulls out the gun, offers it to her.

She gazes at it like she's never seen one before. Shifts her clear blue focus up to him.

He gives the gun an impatient little wiggle. “You know how to use this?” With a single motion he chambers a round and holds it out again. “You point it at whatever you wanna kill and you-”

“I know how to shoot a gun,” she says, voice low, and takes it. “I shot a .22 before.”

“Alright. Ain’t no rifle but same idea.” _You ever kill anything with it_ is the other thing he wants to ask, but perhaps it's better if he doesn't have that answer eating at him.

She knows how to shoot. That's what matters.

“We got only a couple blocks to go. You stick close. You start bein’ a drag on me, I ain’t waitin’ around.” He nods down the street toward the intersection, where a five-car pileup forms a mountain of twisted metal that gleams in the sun. Some places here burned to a crisp in the bombing and some didn't. That irrational rationality of events. “That way. One of ‘em comes at you, aim for-”

“The head. I know.”

“How’s your aim?”

She gives him a crooked, non-committal smile and rolls the shoulder over which the pillowcase isn't slung.

He groans, turns away. At least she isn't lying to him.

~

The first block is still all right. The second one over is where the bill comes due.

“ _Fuck,_ ” he hisses, whips out a hand and seizes her by the arm, hauls her back around the corner. They were moving quiet, keeping their heads down. Maybe they haven't been spotted. The means by which the geeks detect fresh meat aren’t always obvious or especially consistent, but the fuckers can sure as hell hear.

The wind direction, at least, is with him.

What's not with him is the numbers. When he left Merle in the department store barely three hours ago, there were only a few milling around in front, aimless and oblivious. Now there are what seem like _hundreds,_ though it can't possibly be that many - right? _Right?_ \- and they look anything but aimless. They're crowded around the entrance, around the smashed plate glass windows, and while he and Merle had the place barricaded fairly well…

Not well enough. They're not just crowded around. They're going _through._ They’re inside.

If there were barricades before, they're down now.

“Ah, shit. _Shit_.” He wants to slam his fist against the bricks behind him. Slam his head against them. On this fun little outing he's been tired and he's been angry, but he hasn't genuinely been _scared,_ and now he's dealing with a delightful cocktail of all three.

If they got in. If they got to Merle.

If Daryl is all alone now.

Touch on his forearm and he just about decks her. Not even with conscious intent; it's pure ferocious instinct, and he barely manages to wrestle it back in time. She must sense it, the abruptly spiking tension in him, because she yanks her hand away, but otherwise she doesn't move, looking up at him with wide eyes.

“He was in there,” she says.

This time when he comes close to decking her it's anything but unconscious. Horror rears its head along with the urge, horror that isn't purely focused on the view around the corner, but he doesn't have the luxury of being upset by himself now, even if it _is_ one of his own personal national pastimes.

He bares his teeth in a near-snarl. “He _is_ in there.”

“Yeah,” she murmurs, her eyes growing wider. She knows what she's just said, and he takes no satisfaction whatsoever in her mortification. “He is. He's in there.”

Fucking hell, he does not need to be _reassured_ by this kid. He practically shoves her away from him, peeking around the corner - no change, he saw what he saw - and then casting wildly about for any available inspiration. Up. Down. Everywhere.

“Is there like an exit or somethin’?”

“Blocked,” he snaps. Blocked in a way which, at the time the unknown refugees blocked them, was undoubtedly about security, and which has turned out in the most perverse possible way. Together they could have cleared one of the doors, maybe even Merle by himself in good health, but Merle with only one good arm… Unlikely. For years of battered childhood Merle was a superhero to him, a fucking god, and he's fully aware of how true that still is and fully aware of what a dumbass he is for thinking that way, but he can be real about this. It's unlikely.

For the love of Christ, he was gone _three fucking hours._

The world can go to shit in under three minutes. Three goddamn seconds. He knows this.

“There's a second floor?”

Blink. “What?”

“There's a second floor,” she repeats patiently, this time not a question. “Could he get up there, or was he hurt too bad?”

He wasn't. Shouldn't have been. He lunges for the implication and clutches at it, at the same time furious with himself for being so stupidly paralyzed by his own shock, for not having thought of it the very instant he saw what he’s dealing with. If Merle was being overrun, he’d fall back. He’d fall back to higher ground. He’d wait.

He’s there.

Out from under the shadow of the building, and looking around and up. No skybridge, or anything like it, but there's an alley around the side, where the gap between the two structures is much narrower. The building next to the store is taller, but if there's a level of windows close enough…

“C’mon.” He slaps her shoulder with the back of his hand. “Got an idea.”

~

When things go right, the bills always come due. Doesn't mean he's going to be a bitch about it when he gets a break.

He also doesn't know that he would strictly consider this _going right,_ because finding an extendable ladder in a storage room when you still have to haul the thing up four flights of stairs with quick death around every corner is very fucking far from ideal.

Maybe she can shoot a gun - maybe she _claims_ to be able to shoot a gun - but she doesn't carry this one as if she's remotely comfortable with it, and he watches her with dubious anxiety as she leads the way, him puffing with the ladder over his shoulder and her aiming around corners. Her stance, the way she has her elbows stiffly locked; it's not like he would have the patience to show her how to not suck at this even if he did have the time, but perhaps to take his mind off the way the edge of the ladder is digging into his collarbone, he's thinking about the logistics of it. The necessity. When he has a free moment or two, when they have the safety. If he can just take five minutes and show her how to fucking _aim,_ because he's beginning to believe that she's survived this long merely by either sheer unbelievable luck or the capricious favor of whatever god is running this whole show, and if she wants to stay breathing-

“Here,” she breathes, pushing open the door at the top of the landing, and he pushes through and into the hall.

It's an office building - standard and unremarkable - and it doesn't appear as if much ever happened here. No bodies that he can see, no signs of violence other than a few overturned cubicle desks, smashed computers, and a lot of loose paper. There's a litter of empty liquor bottles along the base of the wall by the row of windows facing the store, and someone has scrawled _THEY HAD IT COMMING_ in wobbly black letters beneath the sills. The extra _M_ feels to him as if it was added specifically for emphasis.

He drops the ladder against the wall, shoulders her out of the way, unslings the bow and uses its butt to smash out the nearest window, sweeping away the worst of the shards. He peers out.

It's further away than it looked from two floors down. That or it simply seems to be, with this much removal between him and the ground. But it’ll reach across to the roof. The ladder. It will.

_And Merle will be there and his arm will be fine and he won't give you one ounce of shit for this child you've apparently adopted and you’ll all waltz out through a fucking chorus line of dead people and live happily ever after. What other possibility even is there._

He grabs the ladder so hard he splinters his thumbnail.

Together, they get it extended and feed it foot by foot out the window and across the gap. The ground below isn't as heavily traveled as the front, but the geeks are down there in full force, and even if one were to survive that long a fall, it wouldn't make an iota of difference. _So don’t fall, you fuckin’ dummy,_ Merle drawls, and Daryl grits his teeth and sets his shin against the bottom of the windowframe.

“I’m gonna go first.” He fixes his attention on her, willing her to keep up the calm; she looks back, pale and solemn. “Hold it steady. Once I’m over you come after, alright?”

She nods. He supposes that’ll have to do.

There's nothing dignified about crawling hand over hand across a ladder. Good thing he doesn't give even a fraction of a shit about dignity. He does give a shit about heights, though, so much more than he wishes he did, and with every painful dig of a steel rung into his knees Merle is chuckling at him. One thing he never could train himself out of, never shove his own face deep enough into it that it would no longer bother him. Normally he's okay. Put him on a stable rooftop or behind a window and he can cope, no problem.

Clambering across a creaking ladder thirty feet above the ground while the hungry dead stalk back and forth beneath him?

Oh, he’s fine. He's fiiiiiine.

And he's also over, fingers curling over the lip of the roof as his boots hit the concrete. He crouches for a moment or two, waiting for his heart rate to return to normal - except not, because his heart rate is _just fucking fine_ \- before he straightens and waves back at her. At her small, round face in the window, her skin still so pale beneath the dark flecks of dried blood.

He takes hold of the ladder, gestures again. Mouths the words - no shouting, though it likely makes no difference.

_Come on. I got you._

He's expecting her to hesitate this time. She doesn't. She's tying the pillowcase around her shoulder, tucking the gun into her waistband, and moving almost nimbly out of the window and onto the steel frame. It clangs softly as she goes, and each swing of arm or leg maintains that odd grace, but he can see her, how what little color remained in her cheeks is gone now, how her hands are shaking with every rung, how the skin visible around her hairline is shiny with sweat that he'd bet has nothing to do with the temperature.

She's terrified.

At some point - fuck knows when - he started holding his breath.

The ladder clangs and clunks. The bottles and packages in the pillowcase rattle softly against her side. Below them, the dead grumble to each other about the situation in general.

 _Come on._ Under his breath, if he's saying it at all. Which he's not. _Come on, girl, just make it. Move your ass. Don’t-_

Don’t.

Because she's literally inches away from him when the ladder falls.

 


	4. this situation's killing me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Far from home and all alone, Beth isn't going to turn down even company as questionable as this man who's found her. Except everything that can possibly go wrong is doing so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, we have two POVs in this thing. That's usually not what I do, but I felt like it worked very well in Everything Where it Belongs, and honestly this doesn't feel like a Daryl Story in the way that I'll Be Yours For a Song was or a Beth Story in the way that Howl is. As with EWiB, this really is a story about them both together.
> 
> Let's just all agree that I'm hardly ever going to respond to comments like a big fucking loser but I'll read and love and treasure each one. Y'all are great. ❤️

Beth Greene somehow always thought that when her death arrived, she would see it coming.

If she considered it, if she really had the time and space to give it some thought, it wouldn't take her long to tease out the reason. It's how people are _supposed_ to die. Maybe not everyone does, maybe horrible accidents happen at random and no one is immune from them, except she was, simply because she _was._ People see it coming. Even if it happens before you get old, even if it's something that strikes you when you're relatively young, you have some lead time.

You have time to say goodbye.

God, she was so stupid.

She's not looking down. She's not looking anywhere except straight ahead at the roof, at _him,_ at the barely restrained ferocity in his gaze and the muscles flexing in his arms as he holds the ladder. The dead things waiting below her don’t matter. Neither does all that long way down to them. He's got her, he said, and she believes him. So far he's been kind of a jerk - okay, a lot more than _kind of_ \- but he's been there when he didn't need to be and he's helped her when he didn't have to and she knows he won't let her fall.

She's so scared, so scared it's taking effort to move at all, scared enough to wet her damn pants at the first loud sound, but she knows he won't let her fall.

So she doesn't blame him when the fall happens.

She feels the ladder shudder, lurch, and give way beneath her, and as the world drops out from under her and the roof and his face begin to slide up and out of sight, her gut somersaults, and with bizarre clarity she's aware that her bladder might indeed be about to let go.

 _Please, no. For the love of God, would you please not_. She's actually almost annoyed. Isn't this bad enough? Isn't what's going to happen to her when she hits the ground enough indignity?

He’ll see it. All of it. Sole witness to how things end for her. And she shouldn't care what he thinks, so far she hasn't even felt as if she did, but as she drops, she realizes that she doesn't want him to see her like this. Like how this end is coming, and neither of them saw before it happened.

She wonders distantly how much it'll bother him.

There’s an enormous echoing crash, agony lances viciously up her left arm, and everything snaps to a halt.

She yells, can't help it; it feels like it just got yanked out of the _socket,_ and how did it even _happen,_ did she collide with the wall and bounce or something, has she in fact landed and she's lying broken on the pavement while the dead things come for her- and then her head lolls back and she's looking up right into his straining face, his teeth bared with effort as he clasps her wrist with both hands.

“ _C’mon,_ ” he grates. “Fuckin’ Christ, grab my hand, _now._ ”

Confusion. Then she gets it, and she jerks her other arm upward, gropes for him, takes hold of him so tight her knuckles hurt as he slowly drags her upward. Her head is a thick chaos of terror and bewilderment - should she be trying to do something? Should she be helping him somehow? Except it doesn't matter; she's reached the lip of the roof and he’s hauling her over the edge, releasing her and tipping over backward and lying supine, gasping. She's gasping too, and dimly she hears that it's almost in rhythm with him, as she rolls onto her back and gazes blankly up at the clear blue sky.

Her arm is burning, sobbing with pain, but when she tries to move it, it doesn't feel as if it's actually been dislocated. She knows how that feels; she learned last year when she took a tumble off a snake-spooked Nellie. Muscle maybe only pulled, then. Possibly sprained. Whatever, she’ll happily take that injury in trade.

She doesn't know how long she lies like that before she attempts to sit up. A while. The throbbing in her arm had lessened but it starts up again as she moves, and she winces sharply. Glances over at him. He's already up, getting to his feet and bending to collect his crossbow before he turns to her. His features are tensed into an expression of exasperation, but she doesn't miss the jangled nerves beneath it. The exasperation isn't even what he's truly feeling.

She wonders if he knows that.

“Get your ass up,” he grunts, nudges the side of her thigh with his boot. “Or you can stay here.”

It occurs to her, as she rises - biting her lip to keep back another wince - that she might actually be safest here. That following him could be the worse option. But it's not an option. She's come with him this far.

And the cold fact of the matter is that if she lets him walk away, there's no real guarantee that he’ll come back for her. No matter what she believes.

However. “Thanks,” she breathes, trailing him as he starts toward the door set into a wide stucco block on the far side of the roof.

He doesn't look back. “You got the drugs.”

Because she's not visible to him, she can roll her eyes in safety. “Still, thanks. You saved my life, that's twice now.”

“Yeah, so don't make me fuckin’ regret it.” He grips the doorhandle and gives it a hard pull; it swings open, revealing a well of darkness, and he doesn't hesitate before he takes hold of the metal railing and starts thumping down the stairs.

No hesitation on her part, either; she follows him, removing the gun from her waistband as she does. The throbbing has once more subsided, but even odds that it'll hurt worse tomorrow.

Assuming there is a tomorrow.

The gun doesn't make her feel any better. It probably should, she thinks as she hits the landing and continues after him. She's got a defense. She's got something to fight back with. But while she wasn't lying when she told him about the .22, she did fail to relate one important detail, which is that she hated it. It felt so clumsy in her hands, so _alien,_ and her stance was too rigid and too uneven to allow her much effectiveness with it. Aiming at the bottles Otis lined up on the fence, trying to focus on the sun gleaming off their sides and ignore Shawn’s heckling, and failing to hit a single thing except for one bottle at the far right end.

Not dead on, and not even the one she was aiming for. Not that she admitted it.

Otis was very kind about it when he finally took the gun from her, told her that he was terrible too when he took his first try and she just needed practice, but she was already determined to never pick the thing up again. She turned on her heel and practically stomped across the field toward the house, the musical tinkle of glass as Shawn took out each bottle ringing in her ears.

But this gun doesn't feel so bad. Maybe it's because it's smaller, fits better in her hands. Maybe it's because some time has passed between then and now. Maybe it's because Shawn isn't here to give her any crap for it if she screws up. Or maybe it's sheer ruthless necessity, because she knows full well that if a gun is available, she doesn't have the option of _not_ taking it.

This nightmarish new world does not abide pacifists.

Down another short flight of stairs, and with eyes adjusted to the dimness she spots the big _2_ on the door the man is reaching for. Could be the fresher air outside gave her nose a chance to recover, because as soon as he opens it, that ever-present stench of rotting flesh billows out and makes her eyes water.

She's getting used to it. At the same time she can't imagine _ever_ truly getting used to it at all.

But the doorway isn't open. Stacked in their way are shapes she can't make out, except that they're dark and wide and blocky, and there's no way to squeeze past them. The man mutters a curse and turns to her.

“Help me.”

Without protesting, without even considering it, she joins him and does as he does when he hurls himself at the barricade, hitting it side-on with his whole body. She manages to remember her arm and turns to aim her right at it, hitting it along with him the second time. It shudders but otherwise doesn't move, but the fourth time it rocks and teeters and finally falls, revealing itself as two shelves of the kind used to display clothes and shoes. Some industrious - or desperate - person leaned them upright against the door. Until now they've held.

One thing’s for sure: no one but them has come this way.

Together they climb over the shelving. The hallway they step into is also short and almost as dim as the stairwell. Above them, a few of the drop ceiling panels have been broken out, and here and there tangles of wiring dangle through the holes. The growls of the dead are still a ways away but dense with sheer numbers, and she thinks of the hum of cicadas on a sleepy summer afternoon. _A plague._ This is a plague right out of the Old Testament, something visited on an evil king and indiscriminately on his people, and in spite of herself she shivers.

She can't think like that. Not right now. Not least because if she does, she's going to start thinking about Daddy. Mama. Shawn, Maggie. And getting lost in that would be a great way to get herself killed.

Get _him_ killed.

They pass a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, another two marked with the universal symbols for men’s and women’s bathroom. At the end of the hall is a set of double doors, and he pauses only long enough to glance back at her and wave a beckoning hand before he shoulders it open and swings the bow up to aim.

The growling swells, and she squints as light breaks in on her, throwing up an arm to shield her eyes. Somehow she missed it from outside, but the center of the store is a wide arched glass roof, of which not much of the glass remains. Everywhere, its shards glitter, flickering like fireflies through a forest of clothing racks and more shelves like the ones that had blocked their way. The eerie contorted forms of mannequins melt out of the shadows. Everything seems to be moving.

Ahead and to the left, a row of escalators break the high plexiglass railing that runs all along the edge of the second level. Someone has tipped a few of the shelves and a couple of the clothing racks against them, blocking the only visible way up. Unless you count whatever other stairways there are, she thinks, but likely those are blocked as well. He did say as much.

The man is picking up the pace, swinging the bow around as he stalks down the aisle between two areas set apart for ladies’ casual wear. Slacks and tops and single shoes litter the floor along with the glass; at some point this place was looted, because at some point just about everywhere was looted, regardless of how much sense it made to loot. Who the heck wants Prada pumps at the end of the world?

“Merle!”

She jumps slightly; if the second level really is blocked off effectively enough, there shouldn't be of them any up here - unless there already were some - but it still doesn't seem advisable to make a racket. Something bangs into the barricade and it rattle, and she half turns, an invisible fist closing around her throat. If it comes down…

There's the exit back to the roof. But after that?

“ _Merle!_ ” He's getting too far ahead and he's clearly not interested in waiting for her. She turns back and hurries after him, the gun suddenly and weirdly heavy in her hands, dragging on her arms.

The shadows are closing in as they move further into the level and away from the huge shattered window, and the lifeless drone is somehow growing louder instead of more distant. Acoustic trick, has to be - the place is shaped oddly, it might direct sound in correspondingly odd ways. But everything is moving now as she moves past it, the mannequins looming and the clothes swaying like wind-blown curtains. The shimmer of sequins and glitter of beads as she follows the man into the formal wear. Gowns for parties and events condemned to be no more than memories, and possibilities never made real.

All around her are ghosts. Even these are the dead, even if they won't try to chew her head off.

Again, that name. He's scared. She can hear it in the tightness, the way the syllable chokes off at the end. He's scared and getting worse, and that sends the fear in her flaring.

For God’s sake, _one of them_ needs to not be freaking out, and she's working so hard to keep it from being her.

It's now almost too dim to see him clearly at all, but she spots him making a sharp left as they hit the back of the level, faced with rows of men’s dress shirts, and once more she has to trot to catch up. When she draws up alongside him he doesn't even appear to notice her, and all at once she remembers his flashlight. He hasn't pulled it out. He's not using it.

That's how scared he is. She remembered it, but it’s entirely possible that he's forgotten.

“You should get out your-” she starts nervously, but he's shoving himself away from her, breaking into a run and down another hallway. A door at the end, she sees as she runs after him - a door and daylight, and as they get closer, a long smear of blood on the grey carpet just over the threshold comes into view.

The man kicks at the door. It slams fully open and into the wall next to it, and when he skids to a halt she only just manages to keep from rear-ending him.

More blood, a trail as if something was dragged. An overturned desk, its top facing the doorway as if someone tipped it over to use it as cover. Like in the office building, scattered paper. There's so much _paper_ in the world, and for some reason she’ll never understand, the thought of it makes her briefly dizzy.

Across the room, a ragged backpack set against the wall, a clump of wrinkled plastic wrap, and an open window. Hanging out of it, tied to the desk, is a rope made of tasteful eggshell white sheets spotted with red.

The red isn't part of the pattern.

“ _Fuck,_ ” breathes the man, sprinting to it and scooping up the pack, leaning out the window and wildly scanning the ground below. She stands behind him, that fist around her throat even tighter now, willing her pulse to slow as it hammers against her eardrums. “Merle! _Merle!_ ”

From back down the hall, a crash. Another one. The unmistakable sound of splintering wood, and the cicada hum rises like a wave on the horizon.

“They're comin’ through,” she breathes, and when he doesn't answer, she throws caution to the wind and grabs his arm, tugging. “They’re comin’!”

He whirls, eyes boring into her - eyes wide, almost crazed, and she releases him and takes a step back, breath freezing at the top of her chest. She hasn't been afraid of him since she first saw him, unless she counts the second when he aimed the bow at her and screamed at her to shut up. He has, again, been a total jerk on more than one occasion, but she's never gotten the sense that he means her any real harm. The opposite, in fact.

Now, though. Now she's just not sure.

“You,” he hisses, and everything is in that one word. He doesn't have to go any further than that. _You. You did this. This is your fault. This is_ all _your fault. If I hadn't stopped for you. If I hadn't wasted time on you._

_I should have left you behind._

“We gotta go,” she whispers. Where she finds the courage to say anything, she has no earthly idea. He has to know. He can hate her all he wants later, but right now a tide of death is sweeping in and they have to _go_ before it washes in over them. “He’s- Look, if he got out the window, he was alive when he did it, he's probably still alive now, so we _gotta go._ ”

He simply looks at her for what feels like a long, long moment. Then he wrenches himself away without another word, shoulders the pack along with his bow, takes hold of the sheet, levers himself out of the window and begins to rappel his way down.

He's not telling her to follow him. On the other hand, he's not telling her _not_ to. So she takes a breath and does, and she very determinedly doesn't look down.

~

On the ground on this side of the building, for some reason the dead are sparse. He pulls a large knife from his belt as one of them approaches and, with a single and almost perfunctory motion, stabs it in the head. It drops and he moves on as if it was never there; she gives it a wide berth, glancing back at a second one as it starts to pursue them. It's slow enough and far enough away that if they keep going at a decent pace it shouldn't be a problem, but a watery feeling is bleeding into her legs, making her knees wobble, and her arm is howling at her again. For a blessed while she was actually able to ignore it - maybe sheer adrenaline - but if so, it's wearing off now, and every discomfort is violently reasserting itself. Her throat is like dry, cracked mud. Her stomach is like a balloon when all the air has been sucked out of it, leaving it a tiny shriveled thing. God, if she falls. If it all catches up with her too hard and too fast and she just goes down.

Would he stop for her this time? Would he come back for her? Would he keep them off her?

Or would he keep on walking?

She wants to cry, and if she starts that up she's just about positive that it'll all be over with him. Whatever ideas he has about her being _just some dumb girl,_ that'll be all the confirmation he needs.

Except, when he swerves into another office building further down the street - stepping over the piles of broken glass that used to be the revolving door - she catches a glimpse of his twisted face, and of the wet glisten in his eyes.

He's near tears himself. Exhausted, angry tears, and therefore not at all unlike the ones she's fighting off.

Abruptly, absurdly, she's filled with the desire to hug him.

“Merle!” More shadows inside. Her stomach lurches. Lord, please not more of this. She honestly doesn't know if she can. She honestly doesn't know if _he_ can. For the first time, it occurs to her that she might not be the only one in danger of collapsing, and if he does, can she protect him?

Because she'd try. Of course she would try. It's with mild surprise that she realizes this - and then no surprise at all. Something very bad has happened, and now he's close to losing it. That doesn't mean he's a bad person.

So she walks after him into the dark, and then she's walking after the weak, flickering beam of his flashlight, demanding that one foot follow the lead of the other. Demanding that her body keep upright and keep moving.

What other choice does she have?

~

The next few hours are a blur of darkness and light, insect thrumming and silence. Corpses piled against walls, blood splashed everywhere. Flies and such an overpowering smell of decay that it makes her double over, retching, perversely thankful for how empty her stomach is. There are a lot of things she knows she's not really _letting_ herself see, because her processing power literally does not extend that far. The things she's seen since this all began, she's bearing the whole unbearable load better than she ever would have believed she could, but she can't even recall when she last slept, and she can see the wall approaching.

And the sun is going down.

It hits her at once when they exit the sixth or seventh building, deep red rays stabbing into her eyes, and she fails to surpress her whine. All those shadows, now so long. Black silhouettes of staggering figures in the middle distance. A lot more than there were when they went in. Turning toward them.

“We have to stop,” she breathes.

He cuts through the air as he whips himself around to face her. “The _fuck_ did you just say?”

“We have to stop,” she repeats. Her voice is dull in her own ears. Beaten down. She can't summon up the energy to be afraid of him anymore, or of the idea that he might leave her after all. She’s declaring a truth. He hasn't at any point struck her as stupid; he has to know it every bit as well as she does. “We can’t keep goin’. It's gettin’ dark.”

He merely looks at her. The sun shifts, and she can no longer read his face. But she can hear his breathing, shallow and ragged as the pack he’s carrying.

The dead are getting closer.

“Please.” She shakes her head. Yeah, she really might not be able to do anything about the crying. It might not be up to her. “You're not gonna find him in the dark, you know that. One of them could get us real easy. We can… We can rest, we can look more tomorrow.”

Still he doesn't answer. She might have to leave _him,_ she thinks with something awfully like mounting hysteria. She might have to walk away from him, find shelter alone, and God knows what happens to her after that, with no water. No food. Nothing except the pills in her pillowcase and the gun in her aching hand.

But at last he huffs a breath full of more scorn and contempt and coldly furious _hatred_ than she's ever heard from another human being.

“Stupid bitch,” he says flatly, and turns and walks away.

Tears finally stinging her eyes and knotting up her lungs, she stumbles after him.

~

He does stop, though. He stops right after that. He's stooping as he walks into the cavernous lobby of what used to be a bank, as if the pack and the bow have suddenly taken on excess weight and he's struggling almost as much as her. It's not _as if;_ he's struggling like hell, the sheer intensity of it piercing her even through her own weariness. She shouldn't feel bad for him, not with how he's talked to her, and she's definitely not about to make excuses for him…

But she does. She does feel bad for him. Because when he leads her into a spacious back office and clumsily shoves a desk in front of the door, Shawn’s face is emerging from the shadows of her mind. Maggie’s.

She hasn't allowed herself to entertain the thought that anything has happened to them. Nothing has. They're on the farm, out in the middle of the country - kind of in the middle of nowhere in particular if she's honest - and surely the worst of it wouldn't reach out there. It wouldn't be like the city. They could have run into a few problems, of course, but they’ll be all right.

That doesn't mean she will be. And loss runs both ways.

He unshoulders the pack and bow, drops them, drops himself down beside them and sags back against the wall, elbows on his bent knees and face tipped up to the ceiling - once again unreadable. There are two windows above him, high and narrow enough that she's guessing the dead won't be able to climb through, and they're facing in a way that allows some early moonlight to creep into the room. But it doesn't touch him. He's merely a dark form a couple yards away from her.

He lowers his head. She can feel him watching her.

Slowly, groaning at the spike of pain in her arm and shoulder, she unwraps the pillowcase and sets it down, sitting cross-legged beside it. It takes her a couple of seconds, and then all at once the realization hits her: she doesn't have to put up with the pain. She can do something about it.

She pulls open the pillowcase and rummages for one of the bottles of codeine.

_Careful. The last thing you need right now is to get stoned or whatever happens when you take too much._

One pill. She’ll try one pill, and if it really doesn't do anything she’ll try another half of one. She works the seal open and picks out the ball of cotton, shaking a few pills into her palm and returning all but one to the bottle.

“The fuck’re you doin’?”

His voice is monotone. Barely interested. She looks up, and violently wishes she could see his face.

“My arm’s hurtin’. From when I fell.” _From when you saved me, you asshole._ She lifts her palm, wondering why she suddenly feels on the defensive. “I’m just gonna take one.”

He grunts. “Whatever.”

Better than flinging more abuse at her. Better than slapping the pill out of her hand. She nods at his pack. “You got any water in there?”

For a long moment he neither does nor says anything, and it occurs to her that just as he might have left her behind, he might now refuse to share any of what he has. But then he sits up a little and pulls the pack open, rummaging through it, producing a plastic bottle of water and tossing it at her. She catches it instinctively.

Only half full. She’ll have to go easy.

God, though, she could down the whole thing in one go. One look at it and her throat is shrieking. Thirst isn't merely a matter of discomfort, she’s well aware. This could at some point become dangerous.

She pops the pill into her mouth, takes a small swallow. Fights a minor war with herself to keep from gulping. God, more, _God-_ But it’s better than nothing, and even after his rage, he _is_ sharing what he has with her.

And he doesn't have much.

She very intentionally hasn't thought about a lot of things since she got here and everything fell into that final terrible collapse, and one of those things is God. Which she should perhaps feel guilty about, but what else is she supposed to feel? It was horrible, it felt like such a betrayal even entertaining the idea, but looking at Karen dead and already rotting in her hospital bed, a long pair of scissors driven into her skull—and, then unknown to Beth, her baby one of the living dead in the nursery down the hall—what conclusion was she supposed to draw about God other than that He had gone out for cigarettes and never come back?

Or that this was punishment. That someone had finally done one sin too many, and now this was the new Egypt and no mercy was forthcoming.

Except that was never the God she grew up with. Other churches, sure, she knew people who went to those and professed belief in a vengeful deity, but her God never punished. Her God never sent plagues into the world, no matter how sinful. Maybe once, but not anymore. Her God comforted the sorrowful and fearful. Her God gave believers strength.

Her God was _there._ So where is He now?

_When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the Lord will answer them; I the God of Israel will not forsake them._

So is she just special? Is she so special that she gets this while all those other people got the worst possible ending?

Who the hell wants that kind of _special?_

She returns the bottle and with vague despair hears the whimper rising in her chest. But why does it matter what he hears from her at this point? How can he think any worse of her than he already does?

He uncaps the bottle and she hears his throat click as he swallows. He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, sets the bottle down, goes back into the pack and pulls out a couple of small oblong packages she can barely see in the low light but which she guesses are food of some kind.

She's not going to ask. No matter how much her stomach feels as if it's turning itself inside-out with desperate want, she's not going to ask.

Then he's underhanding one of the things into her lap.

She stares down at it for a few seconds. Picks it up and peers at it. PowerBar. They're disgusting, or at least she's always thought so, and yet in this moment it looks like a full turkey dinner with all the trimmings, and she claws off the wrapping and stuffs it into her mouth, nearly moaning with relief. It's food. Lord. She can't even remember when she last ate or what it was and it doesn't matter because this is _food._

“Don’t eat it too fast,” he growls, the words somewhat garbled by his own mouthful. “Gonna make yourself sick, stink up the place.”

Her body is demanding that she not listen, that she go ahead and get the entire thing into her as fast as she possibly can, but she wrestles it under control, finishes with smaller bites. She does suck the last of the taste off her fingers, and she doesn't give a crap how pathetic it looks. She _is_ pathetic. When you're starving there's no room for dignity.

And again, she sincerely doubts he cares either.

“Thanks,” she murmurs presently, setting the wrapper aside. She's almost overcome with the urge to lick that clean as well, but maybe she does have her limits after all.

Another grunt. A moment of silence, then he pushes to his feet and picks up both the bow and the water bottle, starting toward the door. “‘m gonna find a toilet.”

She blinks at him. A bathroom break makes sense right now, but there's something weirdly purposeful in how he says it. “Okay?”

“Tank,” he says, pausing and glancing back over his shoulder, his tone clearly conveying that she's an idiot and should have grasped this immediately. “Water’s drinkable.”

 _Oh._ She _does_ feel like an idiot, because she _should_ have grasped it. But she's so tired. In truth it's kind of amazing that she's grasping anything at all. Kind of amazing she could focus enough to catch the bottle, that she had enough fine motor control left to get the wrapping off the PowerBar. And she can feel that focus and that control slipping away, her head and eyelids beginning to droop, and the scratchy, thin carpet of the floor seems so very inviting.

So she doesn't fight it. She nudges the pillowcase and its contents out of the way and lowers herself down, knees drawing up against her chest and one arm - her right arm - gingerly crooking behind her head. But every ache and throb in every muscle is less important by the second, and maybe it's the codeine that's descending around her like a thick blanket. Likely the codeine is only augmenting what would be happening anyway. Either way, she's giving up; every hour for what seems like a hundred years has been a battle to keep from doing so, and she's done. If he wants to berate her for it when she wakes up he's welcome to. As long as he doesn't bother her now.

He doesn't bother her. But she can sense that he's still there, and studying her. That blanket is heavy; nevertheless full unconsciousness has yet to find her, and somehow words form themselves in the whispering corners of her mind and escape her intact.

“‘m Beth.”

Nothing. Whatever; he doesn't have to respond. She's done her part, and as a shaft of moonlight slips across her closed eyelids, she's finally drifting away from everything, cocooned in fatigue and opiates.

But she does hear him, and she knows she's not imagining it. One word, quiet, and for once in a tone she can't interpret at all. There's something in it, though.

Maybe a lot.

“Daryl.”


	5. working through the sleeping hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth sleeps. Daryl thinks. Thinks too damn much, probably.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this isn't a factor in this chapter, exactly, but I do want to note that I'm probably going to be messing a good bit with the show's timeline. Some of that is that I have to and some of that is that my grasp on time tends to be not especially good. I've been examining the show timeline on the TWD wiki, and yeeeeeeah, it's gonna get mushy. Just be aware. 
> 
> (Not that time isn't already mushy in the damn canon.)
> 
> For those wondering, though, if the first day of the outbreak is Day 0, we're at about Day 30, give or take a few. I'm cutting Rick's time in the coma a bit short, because - again - I have to, and also because it shifts that part of the story away from fabulously unrealistic to merely very unrealistic. 
> 
> So we're at about the time in my version of this universe when Rick wakes up. Again, give or take. It's mushy. Don't think too much about it. 
> 
> That was a very long intro to a short chapter it frankly doesn't have much to do with. Oh, well.
> 
> Thanks again so very much for reading and kudosing and commenting and everything. ❤️

Turning his knife over and over in his hands, he watches her sleep.

Should feel creepy about it. Maybe he kind of does. But he's not watching her like _that_. He's merely watching her, a bit idle on one side and a bit focused on the other, both approaches meeting in the middle and becoming something both distant and bemused. He has even less idea what to make of her than he did when he got her out of that damn fishbowl. He has no idea at all what to make of the fact that she's still here. Speaking in terms of pure rationality, he should have kicked her to the curb long before now. Yet here she is, and he's cutting her in on very necessary shit that he doesn't have a whole lot of, and now not a whole lot of time to spend on scavenging. Until they find Merle, they'll have to do with what they pick up along the way.

Should have told her to fucking scram. What has she done besides be a hassle? What good has she been?

_She’s been your pack mule._ Yeah, well, not like he was forcing her to do that, was he? _She helped you get through the shit in your way._ Could have done that just fine on his own. _She helped you look._ Again, how valuable was that, really?

_She kept her eye on the ball when you were losing your grip on everything. Reminded you of things you were forgetting because you were that degree of shellshocked and because you were drifting. Listing hard to port, you were, and she pointed out the rocks._

_Face it, man. You would very likely be in significantly deeper shit than you are right now if she hadn't been around._

His hand tightens on the knife’s handle and he drops his head back against the wall with a soft _thunk_. A few feet away, she stirs and moans something, tucks her head and limbs closer to her body. She’s so small curled up like that, her skin gone milky and her hair tangled silver in the moonlight. Nothing pretty about it on any level; she's still bloodstained, the spatters and spots tar-black against the pale, a smear of dirt and sweat across her cheek. But what he can't shake is her body itself. The affect. It looks as if she's trying to shield her more vulnerable parts from a blow, and for the briefest of moments he feels vaguely sick.

What the fuck is her deal, anyway? Where the fuck are her parents?

Does she still even have any?

What has _she_ lost?

He's an asshole for not thinking much about that until now. But he's an asshole anyway. Always has been, and there's no reason why, even after the end of the world, that should change.

He takes a swig of water, sets the bottle on the floor by his knee and goes back to fingering the edge of the blade. Running the pad of his thumb lightly up and down, feeling the alternating wicked razor smoothness and the spiky teeth of the serrations nearer the hilt. There's something comforting about it, something centering. If he had a whetstone, he would sharpen it even if it doesn't need sharpening, let the repetitive motions and the grating whisper soothe him. But he lost his only one weeks back, even before the first outbreak, and he hasn't located a replacement. Been using Merle’s.

Merle. And that gets him mad all over again.

Swear to God, if Merle is dead. Swear to _God_.

Okay, so swear what, exactly? If Merle is dead, what precisely is he going to do? Throw a fucking tantrum? Kick and yell and break everything breakable? Find all the munitions he can scrounge together and blow some shit up simply because he’s able to do so? Scream at her? Tell her at bolt-point to get the fuck away from him and never bring her useless ass near him again? What's the plan?

Blowing shit up might be satisfying, in the most pathetic possible way. Likewise breaking, if the material required for _blowing up_ can't be located.

It takes him a moment to realize that the last two options got dismissed out of hand.

Well. He might scream at her. He can't imagine it would make him feel like anything other than a complete piece of shit, but he might do it anyway. He might not be able to stop himself.

_If Merle is dead._ He swipes a hand down his face and holds his breath until he stops shaking.

If Merle is dead, he doesn't know. He doesn't have the first clue what happens then. The truth is that he can't actually imagine a world in which Merle is not present. The truth is that he can't actually imagine a situation in which Merle doesn’t make it out alive.

There's no way to plan for the unimaginable. The world is in the state it's in because no one could imagine things going this wrong, so no one knew what to do when it began, and by the time people started coming up with even the most basic outlines, it was far too late.

And here he is. Holed up in an office in a napalm-charred Atlanta with the dead walking and his brother out there somewhere, hurt and alone and maybe in a hell of a lot of trouble, and a weird-ass girl he can't seem to bring himself to get rid of.

_Beth_. Her name is Beth.

Another swallow of water; it tastes stale but otherwise it's all right. It's water, and in this world that's plenty in every meaningful sense. Beth. He turns the name over and over in his mind, feeling out the single syllable, the hard beginning and the soft, whispery end. Running his attention over it like his thumb over the blade. Sliding it onto his tongue and against the insides of his lips, mouthing it silently. _Beth, Beth. Beth._ Short for something? Elizabeth? Bethany? Or just Beth?

He's extremely aware of the fact that he’s thinking about this so he doesn't think about anything else.

Jesus God, but a cigarette would be so great right about now.

Know what else would be great? Sleep. If he could just reach it; probably one of them should keep watch, but like hell he’s staying up all night, and he's not sure he could wake her if he tried. The window above his head is open a crack, and from outside comes the low whistle of a breeze that carries the faint groans and mutters of the geeks. Initially he mused over whether or not they really were trying to speak, whether some part of them was still coherent enough, _intact_ enough, to be attempting some form of communication. Asking for help. Asking what happened to them. Asking what they were doing and why they couldn't stop. Asking their prey to hold the fuck still and stop running around and screaming and trying to kill what's already dead.

Telling each other to wait. Just be patient. Sooner or later there won't be any of those running screaming little idiots left.

_Sooner or later they’ll all join us and we can be finished with this._

Part of him has always recoiled from the idea, not just because it's horrifying but because it's pointless. All any of them could ever do at the end of the day was try to stay alive, and sooner or later everyone does end up like them. Only difference is whether you get up and walk around or take the more traditional route of motionlessness. In the long run it probably comes to the same.

Really, nothing has changed.

Really, nothing ever does.

The sound of the geeks is as soothing as the edge of his blade. Before he slips into a thick unconsciousness, the rhythmic sigh of her breath joins it and eases him in.

 


	6. you'll be walking out ahead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 2 of Beth and Daryl's search for Merle commences. Despite Beth's best hopes, it doesn't end like either of them wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you'll permit me, before we get to the story I want to take a second to yell at you. Kinda. In a very general way, and not relating to this fic. Semi-incited by another one of my WIPs, I went on [a bit of a tear on my blog](http://dynamicsymmetry.tumblr.com/post/167836521251/on-reviews-and-fanfic-economies-hey-guys-we) about the importance of comments/reviews for an author if you like an author's stuff and want them to write more. Look, I feel awkward about it, but especially given that this will hopefully be another long one, I also feel like it might be worth calling your attention to it.
> 
> Readers need to understand how much power they have, and they need to understand how much authors need them to use it. 
> 
> All that said, this continues to be extremely much fun to write and I hope you're having a good time too. Like I've said many times, I'm bad at responding to individual comments, but I read each one and each one matters hugely, so thank you. ❤️

She's home.

She's _home._ Oh God, she's home, she's home; the trip back must have been long enough and hard enough that the memories of it have been beaten right out of her head, but it doesn't matter, because she's home. Sitting in the dining room, evening sunlight pouring through the tall windows and washing a honey-tone over the white walls and crisp white tablecloth and rich brown wood. The cabinet with Mama’s good china. The painting hung near the entrance to the kitchen - a field also glowing with that same late sunlight, two silhouettes on horeseback making their way toward what she always imagined was an unseen stable and an unseen house beyond that, probably much like her own. The old chairs with their gracefully carved backs and the old dining table with its glossy top.

The food spread out across it. She gapes at it, at the sheer _amount_ of it; it's not that Mama is ever stingy with serving but surely it's more than a family of five could ever eat. A mountain of butter-gold mashed potatoes, a roast chicken so big that for a second she mistakes it for a turkey. Fresh, flaky biscuits piled dangerously high in their basket. Practically an entire soup tureen full of gravy. Green beans. Sweet potatoes brown with cinnamon and nutmeg. It's overwhelming, and she looks from the feast in front of her up to the beaming faces of her family, all those smiles fixed on her. Shawn and Maggie, Mama and Daddy, so happy to see her. They were beginning to fear that she was gone for good, Mama was beside herself and Daddy was barely speaking, but now here she is and it's all right again, and she must be so hungry, she should eat and eat until she's more than had her fill, because this is a celebration. This is nearly a _miracle._ Beth Greene, their little girl, returned from the dead.

_The dead._

Those smiles are awfully wide.

She looks around the table, and suddenly it hits her, what's been feeling so subtly odd about the whole thing: she’s in Daddy’s seat at the end of the table by the china cabinet, where no one else has ever sat in her entire life. It's _always_ Daddy in this place, and maybe this is because this feast is in her honor, but she doesn't like it. It's not right. She'd much rather take her place next to Maggie, and she's beginning to push herself up, opening her mouth to ask to make the switch-

Hand on her wrist, surprisingly firm. Shawn, pulling her back down; she looks at his hand and then at his face, and he's showing a bit more in the way of teeth than his smiles usually reveal. There's something hard under the cheer, and when she doesn't immediately yield, his grip tightens so much and so suddenly that it hurts.

She drops back into the chair and winces, twists her wrist free, and opens her mouth again, this time to ask him what he thinks he's doing, holding her that hard. But she sees that smile - that _grin_ \- and she can't say anything.

All of them, showing their teeth.

They're not smiling after all. They're not even grinning. They're _leering_ at her, a mocking edge in it, and as one they're leaning in closer.

 _Get up,_ she thinks. _God, you idiot, this isn't right, get UP._ But she can't. She can't move at all. She's frozen in place, her fingers hooked against the tablecloth, as Maggie picks up the mashed potatoes and holds them out to her.

_What’s wrong, Beth? Take some. C’mon, you must be starvin’._

If she could move her arms, maybe she would. But she gazes at them, motionless and helpless and now speechless, and this is all wrong. This is all so very, very badly wrong. Because the light is getting redder and redder, and not in the way a sunset deepens, and those leering grins are widening and widening until the gleeful faces of her family look as if they might literally split in half.

The potatoes are moving.

Her focus snaps back to them, her eyes widening. Her imagination, maybe- Except no, they're definitely moving, they're _wriggling,_ and as she watches, her stomach curling on on itself in numb horror, maggots begin to worm through the tops of those golden fluffy mounds.

Something smacks into her face and she yelps, flinches; a fat black fly drops onto her plate and lands on its back, its legs waving in the air. Then another one against the nape of her neck, her arm, and they're all around her, their buzzing drone rising in her ears. She can move now - and yet how she does and doesn't move isn't up to her, because as she slaps them frantically away from her face and hair, her gaze crawls inexorably from the potatoes to the chicken, and long before she reaches it she knows what she’ll find.

It's rotting. It's falling apart, more maggots squirming over its peeling skin and flopping onto the platter to swim in its congealed juices. Flies land and rise and land again. The gray green beans, the mealy carcasses of the sweet potatoes, the stinking black jelly that was once gravy - all rotten, all food for the flies, and that's when she realizes that it's not just the food: her _family_ is rotting, sitting there and grinning at her and rotting, their hair patchy and skin sloughing off, exposing bone and withered muscle. Those grins are so wide because they no longer have lips. Maggie has raw soupy caves where her eyes used to be, and even though she's dead and by appearances has been dead for months now, still she proffers the bowl.

But it's Daddy who speaks. And when he opens his mouth, his purplish-black tongue drops between his jaws and plops onto the plate in front of him, twitching like a dying snake. Yet his voice is as clear as it's ever been.

 _Go on and eat up, Bethy. Don't complain. This is what you have now. This is_ all _you have now. Haven't you heard? The world’s gone and died, sweetheart, and you're the only one left._

_You're the last girl standing._

~

“Hey.”

No. No, she can't take it if another one of them says something. She’ll go insane. She'll simply lose her mind beyond recovery and sit there with her dead family and dine on the delicacies they've laid out for her. Might even be a blessing, ending up too crazy to care, but while she's still sane she _will not listen if-_

“Hey!” Something bluntly pointed drives itself into the back of her thigh just below her ass and she jerks, gasps so hard her lungs lock up, flails herself up to sit and looks wildly around.

Not the dining room. Not the house. Not Shawn or Maggie, or Mama or Daddy. No food, rotting or otherwise. Only a mostly empty room she doesn't recognize, a scatter of papers and overturned furniture, and a high set of windows through which pale morning light is spilling.

And him. Him, and the toe of the boot he woke her with. She turns at the waist and blinks up at him; he's standing over her, his face half-shadowed, his pack in one hand and his crossbow in the other. _Him._ It's all hazy. He found her. They were looking for someone. She screwed up somehow, and he was angry with her.

He didn't leave her behind.

“Fuckin’ finally,” he growls, and as she scrubs a hand down her face he drops the pack beside her. “Drink some water and eat somethin’. Fast. ‘less you wanna stay here, and I ain't comin’ back.”

Her stomach sinks. So apparently he's _still_ angry with her.

Except she's not so certain about that. He was angry with her yesterday, yes. But he was also kind of a jerk in general, a cranky one, so maybe this isn't angry for him. Maybe this is standard for him. Maybe this is merely how he is.

Not ideal, so far as company goes. But it's not as if she's in a position to hold out for better.

She unzips the pack and fishes out the bottle, probes a bit deeper and closes her hand around what feels like another PowerBar. She brushes other stuff as she pulls it out; clothes, probably, and a couple other things she can't identify. Which, fine. She doesn't need to know what they are. She's sure as hell not going to take some kind of inventory of his personal effects while he's standing right here.

She unscrews the cap, takes a swallow, replaces the cap and wipes her mouth. “Thanks.”

Grunt. He turns away, paces toward the window. She studies him as she tears open the PowerBar wrapper; he's twitchy, muscles jittering with nervous energy. Yes, they were looking for someone. His brother. But when they got to the place where his brother was supposed to be…

She takes a bite of the bar - and for an instant it wriggles in her mouth, and she nearly spits it out.

No. It's just a chunk of compressed food-like material. It's not alive. It's not rotten. It's probably not _capable_ of rotting. A hundred years after a nuclear blast and it'll likely be just as edible as it is now.

Which is to say barely. She wolfs it down anyway.

She tosses aside the wrapper - she was raised never to litter but it really doesn't matter at this point, does it - and pushes to her feet. Her mouth feels absolutely disgusting and her skin and hair don't feel much better: grimy, oily, and she must smell appalling. But she'd bet any amount of money that he doesn't care; she's not close enough to verify, but he can't smell any better than she does. He definitely doesn't _look_ like he does. His ragged tank top and pants and skin are every bit as grimy as hers feel, his brown-blond hair alternately sweat-plastered to his scalp and sticking up at weird angles.

His back is to her, but she pictures his face. It's an odd face. He's clearly older than her, maybe quite a bit older, but his face…

 _He looks like a kid,_ she thinks, finally articulating what's been tugging at her since yesterday. It's his face, but even more it’s his whole affect, how he moves, how he holds himself in the world. That unsettled, nervous energy. Uncertainty. There's looking like something, and then there's a deeper resemblance that doesn't depend on surface appearance. _He could be in his late twenties, in his thirties… but he looks like a damn kid._

_He doesn't look that much older than me._

Abruptly he turns, his eyes narrowed. “What?”

“Nothin’,” she murmurs, a flush blooming in her cheeks and ears as she drops her gaze down and away - embarrassed. She keeps putting a foot wrong with him, and while she's no longer so worried about being left to fend for herself, she still has to be _around_ the guy.

_Daryl. His name is Daryl._

“You got somethin’ you wanna say?”

“No.”

And on a slightly mad impulse she looks up again and straight into his eyes - and she doesn't blink, doesn't shift her gaze. She matches his, steady, wondering at herself, feeling something inside her harden around her spine. This is not aggressive. She's not trying to start a fight. But she feels, with total certainty, that she has to stick this out. She has to hold firm.

She's showing him something.

“No,” she repeats, softer.

Another few seconds. Then he gives her a single, short nod and moves over to her, scoops up the pack, steps past her without a glance back - all so quick it startles her.

“C’mon.” He gestures at the pillowcase lying beside her. “Grab them drugs. We’re gonna need ‘em.”

She sighs, pushes up to her knees and reaches for the makeshift sack - and her arm _wails,_ startling her far more than his rapid movement did, and she falls back onto her ass, clutching her shoulder with a sharp whine.

He whirls, scowling. “The fuck?”

“My arm.” The words strain out through her teeth. She forgot. Somehow she forgot and she didn't feel it until now. The codeine. Or who knows how. Doesn't matter; she can't immediately feel anything other than the pain. “When you caught me. Remember?”

He grunts again, clearly exasperated - but he crouches in front of her, looking her over. “You gonna be able to move it?”

 _I honestly don't know._ “I think so.” She does, experimentally, and suppresses another whine. “Maybe it's just stiff. Maybe if I stretch it out a little.”

“Can you carry the bag?”

The bag. The codeine. Right. Burst of relief; it did help and now she can take more - except it also made her drowsy. Half a pill, then. Just enough to make it more bearable. She reaches gingerly into the pillowcase and rummages around for the bottle she opened.

The pill breaks in half easily enough. She dry swallows it, gathers herself for a moment, and rises.

Not as agonizing this time. Stiff, for sure. She guesses she’ll find out pretty quick if that's all it is.

He straightens up. “You good?”

“Yeah.”

She's about to reach down for the sack, and not looking forward to the movement, but he beats her there and puts it into her hand. She closes her fingers around it, looks up at him, and he gives her another one of those nods.

“Take it easy,” he says, and turns to shove the desk away from the door.

She follows him out without another word. So long as she doesn't move the arm too much, it's not actually that bad. Good; the last thing she wants to be is a liability. More than she already is. _Take it easy._ Probably said that because he doesn't want her to be a liability either. Probably because he doesn't want her to hurt her fool self even worse, make herself even more of a drag on him.

Except there's how his voice sounded when he said it. Brusque, absolutely. But still.

But still.

~

It's brighter today. Warmer. It's going to be downright _hot_ later, given how fast she can feel the temperature rise as the sun climbs higher. Early yet. It's strangely quiet, as they step back into the street. It's not as though the dead sleep, but there do seem to be fewer of them. They wander aimlessly; she and Daryl hug the walls and ease through alleys, and only a couple stagger toward them and have to be put down with a stab of Daryl’s knife to the skull.

She has the gun again and holds it ready - or as ready as she feels like she can - but mostly she watches him, focusing on what's in front of her to take her mind off the steady throb in her arm.

He's so casual about it. Or maybe not exactly casual, but brisk. Businesslike, as if stabbing dead people in the head is a normal day for him.

Which it may actually be at this point.

She can't see any pattern in the route he's taking, though she's trying to expand her ideas of what might be considered _logic,_ and she's just about to ask him if there's something she's missing, when he abruptly halts and drops to one knee, fingertips splayed against the cracked pavement. They're in an especially narrow alley, facing - she's pretty sure - south, and for most of the day the buildings on either side would probably be blocking the sun, but by now it's high, and shining almost straight down on them. She glances back to confirm that none of the dead are following them, even at a distance, and bends, peering at whatever he's spotted.

She can't see it. “What?” she asks, immediately irritated by the audible timidity in her tone.

But for once he doesn't seem exasperated with her, and he doesn't look up. “Blood,” he says, pointing to a few speckles on the dirty gray concrete - spots she would have usually passed over, but now that she’s truly seeing them - their rusty brown, the way they've fallen - there's no mistaking them for anything else.

“Not fresh,” he murmurs, glancing up and ahead of them. “Hours old. Probably from yesterday.” He sucks in a breath. “He came through here.”

“How do you know it's him?”

She regrets the choice of words the second they're out, but he doesn't snap at her. When he speaks, his voice remains low, almost soft, and more than a little distant. He's barely paying attention to her.

“I just know.”

She supposes she’ll have to content herself with that. At any rate, it's a direction.

~

He follows the trail. She follows him. She's back to taking it on faith that there _is_ a trail to be followed; the blood trail doesn't continue much beyond the other end of the alley, at least not that she can see, but she no longer trusts her own eyes. Regardless of what she can or can't see, Daryl is moving with newly intensified purpose, his attention not only focused down but all around him, as if he's perceiving things in the environment as a whole that she can't identify.

There's something about this guy. It's not only that he's childlike in a way she's never encountered before. The way he moves through the world itself is different, as if he's alongside her but also the tiniest step to the left.

Down another, narrower street, this time mostly deserted. Ahead of them at another intersection, a half destroyed roadblock has been erected. Two burned-out cop cars sit behind a row of steel fencing sections, and a scorched military humvee is to the right of them. The area itself is scorched, the fronts of the buildings blackened and warped in places, the pavement in the same condition. Some of whatever they were dropping from that first wave of bombing must have landed here, and, like elsewhere, proven oddly reluctant to spread. From what little she's seen, the destruction was very much block-by-block. Some went up in flames and others were spared.

_Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come._

“Were you here when it happened?” she asks quietly.

He doesn't spare her a glance. When he speaks he still sounds distant, leading them into the shadow of a squat convenience store. Through the shattered windows, the interior appears to be nothing but soot and ash. “When what happened?”

“The fires.”

“The bombs?” He grunts. “No. Wasn't here.”

“Where were you?”

“Was outside the city a ways. On this big hill, watchin’.”

There's something in his voice that tugs at her. For the moment all his prickly irritation has left him, and now he merely sounds… sad. He sounds sad, and he sounds very tired, and she wonders if it might be better to let him be.

But of course she's not going to. “With your brother?”

“Yeah.”

“I hope we find him,” she says, still quiet. “I'm…” She looks around them at all that emptiness, the charred carcasses of the buildings and other scattered cars - and here and there, more frequently now, husks that are unmistakable as anything other than humans. Crawling. Curled up. Huddling against those cars or in doorways. Maybe they had already been dead. Maybe not. She's seen so much more of Hell than she ever believed could be real. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry we didn't get there in time to catch him.”

Grunt as he climbs over a low pile of rubble and hops down on the other side. She's expecting nothing more than that, but when she joins him, he does finally shoot her a brief look.

His face is as tired as his voice was.

“Ain’t your fault.”

She's so startled that for a moment or two she's speechless, struggling to process. Yesterday he gave her every indication that as far as he was concerned, it _was_ her fault, and he resented her deeply for it. But it doesn't sound like he's just saying it to say it.

She would be very surprised if he ever just _says things to say them._ She should have no way of knowing that but she does all the same.

“I-” she starts, but he cuts her off, and she hears the thin smile, though she doesn't see.

“I'm the one dumb enough to drag your sorry ass around. Coulda left you anytime.”

In spite of herself, she laughs. Some of it is that lingering surprise, but even more of it is that unlike yesterday, he obviously doesn't mean this, and he's not trying to convince her that he does. This isn't teasing, not exactly… but it's also not that far off.

“I'm sorry anyway.”

He rolls a shoulder, otherwise doesn't respond. She takes that as acceptance of the apology. No reason not to.

But now she does have a question, and though it's an awkward one, she might as well ask it while he seems to be in a relatively talkative mood. It's not one she especially wants to know the answer to, truth be told. But she needs to know all the same.

“What's gonna happen when you find him?”

“Huh?”

“I mean… What’re you both gonna do?”

“We came in here lookin’ to scavenge,” he says slowly. “See what we could see. Figured maybe the fires woulda cleared it out some. Then we was gonna head to a place we heard about, where they work on this shit. Diseases.”

“Oh, the CDC?” Makes sense. If anyone knows anything, if anyone is left who can help them, it's as good a place to look as any. “You wanna see if they can tell you what this is?”

He shakes his head. “Kinda. Mostly Merle wanted to see if there was any meds or anythin’ might be worth somethin’. Loot the place if he could. I dunno, it was just someplace to go.”

“Maybe they have a cure.” The thought brightens her. Again, if anyone does… “Maybe there's lots of people there. Maybe it's gettin’ better.”

“Maybe,” he murmurs. But he sounds profoundly skeptical. “Kinda think if they had a cure, none of this woulda happened.”

“Maybe they found one since then and we just don't know it yet,” she persists. “Could be it's just takin’ them all a while to get everythin’ up and runnin’ again. We-”

He's no longer listening to her. Instead he's skidding to a halt, staring down at the pavement ahead of them. Jerking his head up, whirling in place, and coming to a stop facing a less severely burned structure across the street. Another office building, looks like, once upon a time. The windows are blank and dark, it looks as deserted as any of the others, but Daryl is striding quickly toward it.

“ _Merle!_ ”

Her stomach leaping, she trots after him, firmly ignoring the burgeoning pain in her arm.

~

She almost loses him. Then she almost wishes she had.

When she steps across the debris-strewn threshold, the place is as silent as the tomb it's become. No growls or hisses. Nothing but the steady drip-drip of water somewhere deeper in-

And a rustle coming from the mezzanine overhead.

This was once another bank, and beside the row of teller windows in front of her, there's a stairway leading up to what she guesses are cubicles set aside for the people who advise you about loans and related services. Beyond it is dimness too thick to see through, but the rustling is unmistakable, and Daryl is hurrying toward it and just about charging up the steps, bow ready but not aimed.

“Yo, Merle!”

Nothing. Merely the rustle, which pauses for a few seconds and then starts up again. She follows him, but more slowly, her hand tight around the grip of the gun. This doesn't feel right. It doesn't possess the same horrifically inexorable quality of her nightmare, but it's not what it should be, and what's waiting for him - for _them_ \- up there is not anything good.

She's not going to attempt to stop him, though. She doesn't know him well, but she knows better than that.

He crests the top of the staircase and vanishes from view, but she can still hear the thump of his boots on the carpeting. She reaches the landing, pauses, continues, squinting into the shadows. Everything is so _dark_ now, even in broad daylight. It's unfair. Bad enough that they-

A cry cuts through the air, followed by a sharp wet thud, and snaps off the end of her thought like a dry twig. She goes rigid, her blood racing adrenaline through her veins. That cry was awful, and it was easy enough to read. Shock, horror - anguish.

She doesn't want to know what he’s found. Her feet are carrying her forward anyway.

He's at the end of a long hall past the main open room filled with, as she thought, cubicles. But the end of the hall is not, as she might have imagined, another office or conference room. It's a storage room about the size of a large walk-in closet, illuminated by the unsteady beam of his flashlight. Near the door she stops and takes it in.

Daryl is standing in the middle of the floor, bow lowered and flashlight aimed down at something in front of him. All around him are shelves of cleaning supplies and implements, a mop propped in a bucket, a couple of different brooms. Directly facing the door, though, is a small worktable with a rack for tools set above it and a half-open toolbox at the ready below.

On the bare floor, what looks like a hacksaw. A hacksaw and a lot of blood. And it's not like she's seen any shortage of blood in the last few days, but this much still rocks her with sudden nauseous vertigo, and she grips the doorframe for support.

Lying in the center of the congealed pool, colorless in the hard light, is a bloated rat pinned to the floor with a bolt.

And beside it, a severed hand.

Not just the hand. Lower part of the wrist as well. It wasn't cut off at the joint. It was sawed off at the point of breakage, splintered bone protruding pale from a mess of ragged flesh. The ends of the fingers are well-gnawed; more bone shows through.

Among the living, at least the rats aren't going hungry.

 _I’m so sorry._ It beats against the inside of her chest like a terrified bird. _God, I'm so, so sorry._ But nothing is coming through the lurching dizziness. She can only stare at it, as motionless as he is, and try to understand.

_We’re too late._

_Again._

 


	7. this crumbling apart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having finally found Merle - or at least part of him - Daryl struggles to cope with the gruesome discovery. But he's not ready to give up quite yet, and his strange new traveling companion isn't about to let him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, let me say that the reaction to this thing continues to absolutely delight me. I love what I'm hearing from y'all, even if I can't quite get my shit together enough to respond. It's keeping me excited and invested, and that's especially appreciated given that stuff is kind of emotionally difficult for me at the moment. 
> 
> ❤️

For a while he doesn't look at it. Then he can't fucking stop. 

Then he doesn't again. 

Christ knows how long he's been sitting here. Bow in his lap, fucking dead rat by his boot, and… _it_ directly in front of him. He's leaning against a rack of shelves on which are stacked toilet paper rolls and bottles of hand soap - things which, some very dim part of himself recognizes, they might consider taking with them when they finally go, because they can't stay in here forever - and the edge of the lowest shelf is digging into the middle of his back, and a weariness he can barely conceive of is smothering him, but hell if he's moving now. 

He's too busy looking at it. Then away. Then at it again. 

She asked him what he was going to do when - _when_ \- he hooked up with Merle again. He told her. At that moment he did have a plan beyond the next five minutes. Long term, he had an object and a direction. When you have those things the future is imaginable. It hasn't happened yet, but it does possess a quality of realness that makes it possible to reach for. To walk toward. He had that, and only now does he understand how much that mattered. 

Because he doesn't have it anymore. That future always included Merle. Merle was part of that plan. Merle was integral. Without Merle there _is_ no plan. Therefore there's no future. 

Without Merle there's nothing but this.

“Daryl,” she says, very low. She's crouching opposite him in the doorway, the pillowcase full of drugs by her feet. The drugs he went out there to get, _for Merle,_ because _Merle needed them._ So why the fuck are they still lugging them around? What's the fucking point? 

Should have left them. Should never have agreed to go after them in the first place. No matter how much Merle bitched and moaned and heaped obscene abuse on him, he should never have agreed to go. He could have taken it. God knows he's taken plenty worse in his time. 

“Daryl.” 

His head snaps up and he merely looks at her. Can't find it in himself to scowl. Can't find it in himself to do anything except _look_ at her with her wholesome Good Girl face, her wide eyes, like sugar wouldn't melt in her fucking mouth. When he wants to shove his face in hers and scream at her until those wide eyes are full of tears, because this is _all her fault._

No. He doesn't really want that. And no, it isn't her fault. 

It's his. 

“The fuck you want?” Dull. Almost slurred, like he's drunk - when in fact he's never felt more brutally sober. 

For a few seconds she appears as if she's actually going to answer, her mouth opening - then she closes it again and looks away. 

He does the same. 

“Must’ve been goin’ septic,” he mutters after another moment or two of silence, to no one in particular. Merely articulating what he's been thinking for the last however-long. It's the one explanation that makes sense, that doesn't involve Merle simply losing his mind and behaving like a fox with its leg caught in a trap. It's difficult to tell, with decay setting in and the damage the rat has done, but regardless. “Must’ve been gettin’ bad too fast to wait.” 

With a sufficiently bad wound, aggressive sepsis can surge up within hours. He's heard of such things happening. A day or so later and you're dead. 

And gazing at it again, something else suddenly hits him. 

“Ain't a ton of blood.” Barely a whisper. He's pushing himself up slightly, looking around - and he sees it, half under a shelf, as if it was pushed. Tossed aside. 

A blowtorch. 

“He cauterized it,” he says, still in a whisper. A horrified one. Horrified, and also _beyond_ impressed, because what it must have taken to do that without passing the fuck out from the shock and the pain… 

Exactly what he would have expected from Merle, to be perfectly goddamn honest. 

“Cauterized?” She echoes the word softly - not much louder than his whisper - and as if she's not sure of its meaning. Hell, for all he knows she might not be. But his gaze flicks back to her and her expression…

Yeah, she knows what it means. It's dawning on her face, and with the same amazed horror. She's pushing herself forward, peering at the awful tableau in front of her, one hand rising to cover her mouth as if she's about to muffle a cry. 

But his attention is slipping away from her again. He leans over and picks up the blowtorch, lifts and examines it; fine speckle of red droplets dry across one side of the handle, and a bit lower, clear prints. Complete prints. Not a couple of bloody fingers but an entire blood-soaked hand. 

“He was alive when he walked outta here.” He turns it, lightly traces his thumb across the prints. He thinks about smudging them and his gut twists. “He _went_ someplace.” 

No way of knowing that. But he does. As with the trail he followed here, he knows and feels no doubt about it, and at least as far as the trail goes, he was right. Will Dixon fancied himself quite the teacher, especially well into a full afternoon of steady drinking, and Merle has always talked a big game of the same damn thing, but one thing he _has_ learned, whether from one or the other or some hellish combination of both, is that he shouldn't question his instincts, because they're rarely wrong. They don't need to make sense. They don't need to be backed up by what his senses are giving them. What they give him is highly privileged info, and if they're telling him that even now Merle is out there somewhere, alive… 

_They also told you to go back for her. They’ve been telling you to keep her around. So what's that about?_

He shakes it off, starts to get to his feet. It's not a matter for the present. From inside a fucking utility closet he can't be confident about the time, but they must have a few hours of daylight left at minimum. If he can find the trail again, if it's fresh enough… 

She's rising too, wide eyes locked on him. “You’re gonna keep lookin’?” 

“ _Shit_ , of fuckin’ _course_ I'm gonna keep lookin’. The hell you _think,_ girl?” He glares at her as he bends and sets his boot against the rat’s skull, takes mean satisfaction in its crunch as he yanks the bolt free.

“I didn't say you shouldn't,” she responds, a bit curt, and scoops up the pillowcase. Which they _will_ need, after all. “I'm gonna help you.” 

He snorts as he slings the bow over his shoulder and pushes past her. “Yeah, ‘cause you'd never make it out there on your own.” 

“Probably not. But that's not why.” 

Something in her tone grabs him, halts him, swings him around. Standing where he is, he’s throwing her face half into shadow, but as she looks up at him, her eyes are bright and keen and entirely unwavering. This - this is exactly what he saw in the hospital room, when she ordered him to put the geek down. This _directness,_ which one might mistake for your standard teenage stubbornness, though he can tell otherwise. 

He makes her nervous. But she's not afraid of him. 

He pulls in a breath. “Why, then?” 

“The way my Mama and Daddy brought me up, you do for others what you'd have them do for you.” She pauses, gnaws thoughtfully at the edge of her lip. “But that's gotta work both ways, doesn't it? It's like a deal. Someone does for you, you do for them.” She waves a hand down the dim hall toward the front of the building. “You could’ve left me back there. You could’ve done it anytime. You didn't. I'm gonna help you, even if… even if I can't do much. I'm gonna do what I can.” 

He stares at her as this speech sinks in, his jaw working. He should respond with something. He should make it clear what he thinks of her cute little _Golden Rule,_ which is that it's pretty much bullshit. It's the variety of bullshit that always makes sense for a girl like her, with her _Mama_ and her _Daddy,_ and then turns out to be worth absolutely squat when the big old nasty world puts it to the test. 

Except here she is, right in the middle of that world, and she's saying it anyway. Like she genuinely believes it. In spite of everything she's seen. 

In spite of what he’s- 

“You're a total jerk,” she adds, and the corner of her mouth quirks very slightly. “But you helped me. I wanna help you.” Hesitation - the first she's really shown since she began speaking. “Unless you’re changin’ your mind now. About… about me.” 

She lapses back into silence. Calm silence. She's not going to plead, and she's not going to argue. She's said her piece. She's done. 

He can respect that. She’s just a kid and she talks more than he's wild about, but she does appear to recognize some kind of economy of words. And. And there's… 

_There's everything else._

Whatever _that_ means. 

“I ain't changin’ my mind,” he says quietly, and turns. Starts down the hall. “C’mon.” 

A second or two, and he hears her following, her bootheels clacking on the stairs behind him as he descends to the lobby. And really? If he sticks with honesty and he doesn't try to dodge? 

It's good. It's good to not be alone. 

It's sure as shit better than the alternative. 

~ 

They look. And for a while his certainty maintains itself - that what he's seeing on the pavement and in scatters of debris is spoor, that it's a trail, that it's freshening. But by late afternoon, two thick packs of geeks barely avoided, his certainty is cracking around the edges, and with every inch the sun sinks, it flakes away.

He doesn't talk to her. Thank Christ, she doesn't try to talk to him. 

Another hour. Two. Up one street and down the other. They're getting further and further away from the center of downtown and the buildings are thinning out. With it, the rubble and the geeks. There was less destruction here. These areas mostly emptied - people went out onto the roads to die in their cars. The occasional corpse is strewn here and there, the occasional few geeks, plenty of signs of looting and now and then a building or two that seem to have burned on their own… 

And inside him, he can feel that solid core of certainty splitting right down the middle.

 _He's alive. He is. He is._ Standing in the middle of the street, squinting into the overwhelming redness of the setting sun, his shirt plastered to his skin, his back and shoulders aching and his eyes burning, his tongue moving in the desert of his mouth as he forms the words without parting his lips. _He's alive. He fucking is._

He is. 

But he's gone. 

“I ain't got it,” he breathes. In the periphery of his vision, he catches the red-gold flicker as she moves. As she walks over to him. 

“What?”

Again, he could yell at her. It's an option. Might help.

No. It wouldn't. He lowers his head and releases a breath so deep it nearly folds him in half. Why take it out on her? What's the fucking point? “The trail. I ain't got it no more.” 

He doesn't know what he's expecting. For her to interrogate him, maybe, in an unbearable attempt to be helpful. _Are you sure? When did you lose it? When did you last have it? What are you looking for? Can you show me? Do you want to try somewhere else? What are you going to do now?_

_What are you going to do, Daryl?_

For fuck’s sake. 

She doesn't. She doesn't do that at all. For a moment she does nothing. Then-

Hand. _Hand on his forearm_. Light, cautious, and neither of those things matters. Instantly every muscle in his body winds up like a rusty spring and he jerks away, dangerously close to actually recoiling - from this small, slim girl who has yet to demonstrate one single iota of real aggression in any direction whatsoever. 

_You fuckin’ pussy,_ Merle sneers, and he grits his teeth. She just. She didn't have to do that. She didn't have to just go and _do that,_ is all. She didn't have to, when the cracks inside him are spreading out around him and he'd swear that any minute now the pavement under his feet will begin to crumble. 

Her hand is gone. But she hasn't moved. He glances at her, and is completely unsurprised to see that calm, simple directness once more. Only now with a solemnity that's new to him. 

“C’mon.” She points at a sizable house across the street - boarded up windows but otherwise normal and intact. Rosebushes. Porch swing. Must have been nice before the world went to shit. “It’s gettin’ dark. Let’s see if it's safe in there.” 

~

It's safe. But it's not empty. 

A lot of the other houses he's been in, there have been abundant indications of the inhabitants packing in a hurry - if packing at all. Closets and drawers left open, the contents scattered all over the floor. Sometimes the packing was clearly begun and then abandoned, suitcases sitting open on beds with underwear half tossed-in. Scenes of order desperately and haphazardly imposed on rising panic, until the panic finally won. As panic like this always does.  

Then there are the houses where no one packed, where no one even tried, because no one ever left.

He knows this is one of those latter as soon as they step through the door he's smashed open. No geeks - he's fairly certain. He made a racket getting the door open but the house itself is utterly silent, and there's a quality to that silence that he could never mistake, a deep emptiness. 

Only not exactly.

“You stay,” he mutters, sets down the pack and raises the bow, flicks on his flashlight and moves down the front hall. She obeys him without a word, and he feels brief and anemic gratitude before his focus shifts to what's in front of him. 

In front of and all around. 

He passes the living room - doesn't go in, but notes how orderly it is, magazines spread across the glass surface of the coffee table, a small flatscreen dark and quiet in the corner, the rug still bearing the lines of the vacuum cleaner’s passage. The kitchen is the same: chairs pushed in neatly around the breakfast table, a single folded newspaper, dishes stacked in the drainer by the sink. Pale counters spotless. 

Upstairs. And somehow he already knows what he's going to find. 

There was no indication of any children downstairs, and their absence in this household is confirmed once he sees the two rooms that flank the hall. One is a study - computer on a wide desk, filing cabinets, two shelves full of books. A sewing machine in a corner. Comfortable-looking armchair. The other room is a clean, somewhat bland guest room, its essential featurelessness a mark of its lack of regular occupation. 

Bathroom. Nothing remarkable there. And at the end of the hall, the door is ajar. 

Master bedroom. It's brighter in here, and he cuts the flashlight off as he nudges the door open with his boot. It's as tidy as everywhere else he's seen, and luxurious in a decidedly unpretentious way. All dark wood and light fabrics, a dressing table with an enormous mirror and an open walk-in closet arranged as more of a dressing room. Directly opposite the door is a four-poster king bed, and on it lies a couple. 

Not a man and a woman. Two middle-aged women, wrapped in each other's arms, and one large and ugly dark stain splattered over the pillows beneath their heads. 

Beside one’s curled hand is a small, almost delicate pistol. 

It's only after he sees them that he notices the smell. The flies beating themselves mindlessly against the windows. The smell itself was already more ignorable than it would have been in better times, because that sick-sweet odor of decay is everywhere now. But it's stronger in here. Not overpowering, but he grimaces, blocks his soft palate and inhales shallowly through his mouth.

They're both wearing plain white dresses. Sundresses, like you'd wear to a goddamn church picnic. 

Whether or not these two women were married already, in whatever way they would define it, they dressed up to be joined in one final union. 

His throat is closing up, and it might not be only the smell. Regardless, he pauses out in the hall, leans against the wall - white roses climbing tastefully up the wallpaper - and takes a few more slow breaths, bandanna pressed against his nose. It smells of sweat and ancient cigarette smoke, and the combination isn't pleasant at all but it's weirdly comforting. 

From downstairs, soft and slightly timid: “Daryl?”

“‘m fine,” he calls, takes another breath, pushes away from the wall and turns. Pauses, reaches back, and pulls the door closed behind him.

She did move from where he told her to stay put, but only as far as the foot of the stairs, and he doesn't feel up to giving her shit for it. He barely gives her a look; merely pushes past her and snags the pack by the strap.

“Settin’ up in the livin’ room.” 

“Is there anythin’ up there?” 

For half a moment he considers simply not telling her. But there's no practical reason to hide it. She's seen bad shit. He has nothing to protect her _sensibilities_ from, even were he so inclined, which he is fucking not. 

“Couple people. Women.” He grunts. “Looks like they…” He glances back, raises a hand to mime a gun, jerks his head. 

“Opted out,” she murmurs. 

“Yeah.” 

She pulls in a long breath. He's turned away again. She can do whatever the hell she's wants. As for him, he's going to settle down on that tasteful fucking couch and long for the smokes he doesn't have. Should have scavenged some from any one of the convenience stores they passed, but searching never occurred to him, and now- 

“I'm gonna go see.” 

Her voice is low, and like her expression was before, it's solemn. He pauses, one hand on the doorway frame, and sighs.

“Go on, then. I don't give a shit.” 

The stairs creak as she climbs them. 

~ 

It's probably not much time before she comes back down, but it feels like a while. He exists within it. He sits and picks at the frayed edge of a hole in his jeans, just above his knee. He longs for a damn smoke. He watches the last of the light die through the gaps between the boards nailed across the big bay window.  

Finally, the creaking as she descends. Her boots on the hardwood, and then the carpet muffles them to near-silence until she halts in front of him. 

He blinks up at her. It's difficult to see her face. But he can feel her studying him, and he doesn't love it, and it's a mild relief when she exhales and sinks down onto the couch next to him.

Keeping her distance. Closer to the other end. 

“I only ever saw one dead person before all this.”

He doesn't turn his head to look at her. This information doesn't surprise him. “Who?” 

“My grandma. My Mama’s mom.” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her fingers fiddling with each other in her lap. “At the funeral. It was… It was weird. It didn't look like her at all. Y’know? It wasn't her. It wasn't real.” She pauses. “I didn't _know_ that it wasn't real. Not then. I just thought it was weird.”

Odd. He does look at her then, at the profile of her lowered head, the dirty tangles of hair hanging in her face. “What, like… body wasn't real?” 

“Oh, no. It was her body. I just mean.” She breathes a laugh. “That's not what dead people really look like. I know that now.” 

He grunts. Doesn't have much to say to that. Doesn't care to say, just for example, that the first dead person he ever saw was at five years old, some wino who wandered into the street at precisely the right moment to have an up-close and personal encounter with a pickup truck driven by Linus Alby who lived two streets over. No point, really, in telling her about the leg torn free from the pelvis and twisted almost all the way around, or the amount of blood that comes out of a crushed skull. No point in telling her that Merle took him to see it, and wouldn't let him look away, because his dumbass little brother needed to see for himself what could happen when you fucked up and were too slow to get out of the way. 

As for Linus, he was drunk but never did any time for it. These things happen. 

She doesn't need to know about any of that. It's not about protecting her. She just… She doesn't need to know. 

“First time I saw one of these? I was so scared. I was so scared I threw up.” She's close to laughing again, and he can hear the thin smile in her voice. “But soon after, it was like it wasn't a big deal anymore. It _is,_ it's still scary, but it's also… It’s just how things are now.”

She drops her head back and gazes up at the ceiling, and as the hair falls away from her face, he catches the glint of moisture on her cheeks. 

“It's sad,” she whispers. “What's happened to them. It shouldn't be like this.” 

Like what? For Christ's sake, like _what?_ How it is now? The fact is that it's not so far removed from how the world always was, and she clearly never knew it, was _spared_ from it, to the degree that she vomited up the truth when it finally faced her. Bitterness surges in him, like the bile that filled his mouth when Merle gripped the sides of his head and hissed at him to look at that ruined human body, hissed that it could be him any time if he was stupid enough, and now he’s wondering if there's anything nearby for him to break. 

But she cuts that urge off at the knees. 

“I think we should go to the CDC.” 

He fully turns to her and stares, totally nonplussed, all the rage gone. “Huh?” 

“The CDC. You said you were goin’ there with your brother.” She meets him, and yet again she holds his gaze with unerring steadiness, her eyes glistening. “He knew that. Maybe that's where he went, figured you'd follow him. If you can't find him here, maybe you can find him there.” 

He thought she might ask him where he was going to go. He never in a million fucking years would have expected that she would _tell him._

He doesn't answer. Not for a long time. It's almost fully dark outside, and in here it's darker. It's of no consequence, that darkness. No use for the flashlight; there's nothing to see. At some point they should eat, drink, but after that there's only sleeping to be done, and only this tiny corner of a dead world to do it in. Them, sole mourners keeping a vigil in this tastefully furnished mausoleum.  

And then there's tomorrow.

Thing is… 

He swipes a hand down his face. “Alright." 

She raises her head, radiating faint surprise. “Yeah?” 

“Yeah. Ain't got no other ideas.” He shoves himself forward and reaches down to unzip the pack. Food. Water. Then sleep. “You wanna go check the kitchen, see if there's anythin’ for dinner besides these fuckin’ bar things?”

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.” Another smile, this time not so thin, and she gets to her feet. “I need-” 

He holds up the flashlight. She takes it. 

“Thanks.” 

Grunt. He sits there, bent over his knees, and listens to her moving off down the hall. Then cabinets opening and closing, the sound of their contents shifting as she searches. 

He has no other ideas. And the thing is, as ideas go, it's a pretty good one. Already he feels less hollow, less drained. If Merle got as far as hacking his own fucking hand off and walking away… He could be there. Sure he could.

 _I think we should go to the CDC._ Yes. 

_We._

Because yet again his instincts are telling him something he shouldn't question. Which is that he shouldn't go there alone.


	8. sometimes I need a revelation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seizing on a last inspiration, Daryl and Beth strike out toward the CDC. What they find there is the end of one journey, and the beginning of another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we're actually hitting the end of Season 1/Part 1 here, a bit ahead of when I thought we would. I guess it makes sense, though; s1 isn't long and doesn't encompass much time, and through stripping the s1 cast down to 2.5 characters, I've simplified things a good bit. Stuff gets much more complicated from here on out, though, and I'm frankly nervous about it. Juggling a lot of characters is never easy for me (yet another reason I couldn't actually write for this damn show unless they'd let me confine myself to episodes like "Still").
> 
> Let me repeat the caveat that for the sake of convenience and because of my own cognitive limitations, I'm playing somewhat fast and loose with the show's timeline. This is _my_ timeline. Don't think about it too much. 
> 
> Thanks, guys. This is a blast so far. ❤️

He awakens her with a shake - rough but not as rough as he might have been - and she lurches out of thick, vaguely nauseating dreams that she immediately begins to forget. Five minutes later, gulping down iced tea made from powder and crunching some dry Cheerios she found in one of the kitchen cabinets, she can't remember a thing, other than that they were unpleasant and she's better off _not_ remembering.

They stayed downstairs. She supposed there wasn't any specific reason why one of them couldn't have taken the guest bed, and other than the master bedroom, the smell of decay isn't really any worse up there than it is anywhere else, only she didn't want to. The idea of a real bed should have been inviting, but instead she considered it, thought about lying up there all alone with something so unbearably sad down the hall, and her stomach knotted up and she knew she couldn't.

So she didn't. She took the couch. She took the couch because he offered it to her, jerked his chin at it with a grunt and nothing more, and she wasn't going to argue with him, out of courtesy or for any other reason. In any case, she found extra pillows and some blankets in an upstairs linen closet, and the place he made for himself on the floor seemed comfortable enough for him. 

Only he didn't sleep. He didn't - and neither did she, though she tried. He sat awake long after she curled up under the scratchy knit blanket, leaning against the armchair a few feet away, his hands folded in the bowl of his crossed legs. He seemed to be staring at nothing, and she watched him, the periodic flicker in the shine of his eyes as he blinked, and hoped he couldn't tell she was doing so. 

Outside, the faint groan of the dead. But not close, and not getting any closer. She wondered if one of them should keep watch, if that was what he was doing. 

Somehow she didn't think he was. 

He remains a puzzle to her. She can’t find the logic in him. He’s rough, harsh, everything she would expect someone like him to be, but she can’t shake the sense that there was something else beneath the surface - not some kind of romantic cliché of a _diamond in the rough_ or a sensitive soul but something a lot more ragged, a lot more painful. Something young, much younger than he appears. 

The way he talks about his brother. The way he _is_ about his brother. As if he's lost now, all on his own, and he's searching with a desperation she wouldn't expect in a grown man. 

Thinking too much. She closed her eyes, tried to catch the reins of her mind and slow it down. It shook free and she couldn't regain a hold. She kept her eyes closed but lay there for some immeasurable length of time, listening to the dead and to his breathing and the creak now and then as the house settled. Dead outside, dead in here. She felt terribly out of place. 

After a long while, she slept. 

She has no idea if he did. There are pits under his eyes, but they were there yesterday. She watches him pull their things together - the box of granola bars she found, a bottle of Evian, bandages and Aspirin taken from the upstairs medicine cabinet. There's more they could carry, but he grunted something about traveling light. But they _can_ take more than when they got here; in a storage closet near the kitchen, she found a real coup: a small backpack like someone would take on a day-long hiking trip. A sight better than the pillowcase, and even if it's small, it's more than big enough for the meds with room to spare.

She was pleased with herself. Not like it took a lot of skill on her part to find it, but even so. She's under no illusions: she would basically be screwed without him. She's okay with recognizing that. All the same, it's good to feel like she's not completely helpless. 

Like she can literally carry at least some of her own weight. 

He straightens up and hefts the pack, gives her a nod. “You ready?” 

She's not, if she's honest. She's still weary, wearier than she would have thought possible, and while it's definitely better, her arm is still throbbing. Even with the tomb upstairs, it might be nice to stay here a little longer. They have water, they have food, and maybe she could even clean herself up a bit. Feel more human. 

But she can read the room well enough to know not to suggest that. And the greater part of her can't banish the idea that there might truly _be_ something at the CDC. She hadn't been merely propping him up with it. The instant she thought of it, her belly jumped with excited revelation. She'd do just about anything to get back to the farm, but that's another thing she knows better than to suggest, and if that's not a possibility, not yet…

She can't not hope. It's the most reasonable thing in the world to hope.

No, she's not ready. But it doesn't matter. She can make herself ready. 

“Yeah.” She zips up her pack and gets to her feet, sliding the strap awkwardly over her left shoulder. “Let’s go.” 

~ 

After about half an hour of walking in silence, he turns abruptly into a 7/11. It's badly looted, windows smashed and door ripped off its hinges, and as far as she knows there's nothing they especially needed that they didn't take from the house, but she follows him without questioning him, bemused. He stalks up one aisle and down another, past mostly empty shelves, before he stops dead with a low, pleased sound and bends in front of a forlorn pile of candy. 

He comes up with a couple of king-size Snickers, reaches back and slides them into a pocket on the side of his pack. He catches her questioning glance and rolls a shoulder. 

“Merle likes ‘em.” 

_Oh_. She gets it - it's a gift. A present for when - _when_ \- they find him. 

It’s a simple thing. Should be unremarkable. But it tightens something beneath her breastbone. 

~ 

Not long after that, heading away from houses and down streets lined with commercial buildings, she realizes that they're heading roughly back the way they came, and with a twinge of mixed confusion and concern, she can’t help speaking up. 

He shoots her a glance. “We ain't walkin’.” 

More confusion. “Huh?” 

“We don't gotta walk,” he says again, patiently. “Got Merle’s hog.” 

That doesn't do much to alleviate her confusion. _Hog?_ He can't possibly mean an actual pig; the sheer absurdity of the image of what it might look like if he _did_ mean that bubbles a giggle up in her chest that she has to struggle to restrain. But she doesn't ask him for clarification, and when they finally reach the department store and she sees what he meant, she curses herself inwardly for being so dumb. Of course he didn't mean a pig. She's heard the phrase, though God knows where, and she should have put two and two together. 

It's parked around back by a loading dock. A couple of bodies are sprawled by the door, a handcart overturned beside them. She barely spares them a glance. 

Of course he has a motorcycle. He would. Again, she wants to laugh. There are some things about this that _are_ straight up cliché. 

One of them is the SS emblem on the side. That twists her gut, kills the laughter. _Merle’s hog._ He said it was his brother’s, not his. It doesn't necessarily mean she's been following a white supremacist around. It doesn't mean he _burns crosses on people’s lawns_ or anything. She shouldn't assume. 

But she's not going to ask. She doesn't want to know the answer. 

Daryl is strapping his bow to the front of the bike, securing the pack to the back, and searching through his pockets for what she supposes are the keys. He must sense her unease, and he glances back at her, already narrow eyes narrowed still more. 

“What?” 

“Nothin’.” She swallows, shifts from foot to foot. She sucks at lying, always has, but she doesn't exactly need to do that here. “I never been on a motorcycle before.” 

He exhales in mild impatience and jerks his head at the bike. “Ain't like it's hard. Hop on.” 

She looks from him to it and back to him. “Shouldn't I… Don't you have a helmet?” 

She knows what he's going to say seconds before he says it. “No.” 

“Okay.” Her voice is soft, and she hates how timid she sounds. What's she going to do, though? Refuse? Insist that they walk anyway? Ask if they- 

“Had a truck,” he adds. “It broke down before we got in the city. I wasn't gonna fuck with it. Move your ass, he's gonna be pissed if he don't get it back.” 

He isn't snapping at her yet. But he might not be too far from that. And regardless… Has she really survived this long and this much to be killed by a tumble off the back of a motorcycle? Does God really have that sick a sense of humor? 

Heck, possibly He does. 

Daryl swings his leg over the seat, slides the key into the ignition, and the engine growls to life. It's as loud as the ones she's sometimes heard passing on the road at night, distant roars through her bedroom window - only close up, and it vibrates through her core. Every muscle in her body is protesting, her instincts hissing at her that this is beyond stupid, but she ignores them and climbs on behind him, settling awkwardly onto the back of the seat, the padding both not thick enough and oddly shaped. 

She feels more than a little precarious. 

“Hold on!” His voice rises to be heard over the engine, and she gets what he's saying - and is weirdly hesitant. She gropes beside her and finds what feel like handles at her sides, but she doesn't at all trust them, or her own hands. And this feels weird too, weirder than she could put into words if she tried, but she's sliding her arms around his waist and lacing her fingers together over his stomach. 

Immediately she feels him tense, and just as abruptly she remembers the sharpness with which he stiffened when she touched his arm the night before. She supposed he was only startled, on edge anyway. 

But now she wonders. 

Regardless, he doesn't try to push her away. He simply revs the engine and the bike surges forward, picking up speed so quickly it makes her gasp. She holds him tighter, squeezes, and once more she feels his muscles go briefly rigid before relaxing.

He's strong. She's seen it, seen his arms and the flex in his shoulders, but she didn't _feel_ it like she is now.

For some reason, it makes everything a tiny bit better. 

The day started cloudy but it's cleared since then, and the sun is high. It and the wind force her eyes closed as he pulls into the street, and she bows her head, her brow resting against his broad back. This is going to work. Whatever else happens, whoever this Merle turns out to be - and that's one thing she doesn't feel so hopeful about - this is going to be okay. Someone will be there, _Merle_ will be there, and then they’ll figure out what to do next. 

Maybe someone can finally take her home. 

~ 

It's not okay. 

They arrive at dusk. It takes longer than it should, which she's not surprised about; the roads are hell, a maze of permanently frozen traffic jams and multi-car pileups, and the dead wander alone and in clots, men and women and children in perverse families that might once have been _real_ families. She sees them stuck in the cars where they died, slapping their gray palms against the grimy windows and snapping ineffectually at the glass. She looks at this, and then she looks away. 

Not because she's horrified by it anymore. Not because she's afraid; he always swings them around before they get too close. She looks away because it just makes her so goddamn tired. It's too much like standing in that bedroom and gazing at those two women entwined in their final embrace. It's too much sadness, too much _wrongness,_ none of it how it should be and nothing she can do about any of it. 

This is simply how the world is. This is what the world has become. 

So he has to take detours. He has to double back, find ways around. He growls and mutters elaborate litanies of obscenity, words she's literally never heard spoken aloud, at least not in these combinations. Once it would have made her blush furiously. Now it's merely another thing to accept. He can do whatever he needs to do, if he keeps them alive. Keeps them going. 

She holds on. She actually dozes now and then, when they find a steady pace, and the movement and the vibration lull her.

Then it's dusk, and they're there, and it's not okay. 

He pulls to a stop, cuts the engine. She had fallen into another doze and now she shakes herself out of it, scrubs her hands over her face and blinks dully at the scene in front of her. 

She's having difficulty processing what she's seeing. 

There is no CDC. 

Not anymore. Once there clearly was. Not too long ago, either; fires are still burning here and there in the field of wreckage. It's an entire landscape. Mountains of shattered concrete, forests of metal beams warped and twisted by heat and the force of the blast that must have leveled the main building and destroyed most of the others surrounding it. They're not even that close, and the ground beneath them is scarred, the grass dark with ash. Glass is everywhere, glittering red like gems in the firelight and the very last of the sun. 

Everything is silent.

She takes a breath. It's all she can manage. 

He's silent too as he climbs off the bike, moving as if asleep - clumsy, close to staggering. He walks a few paces and stands there with his hands loose at his sides, a shadow silhouetted against the flames. She can't see his face, and though it shames her, she's grateful for that. 

They've only been in one relatively small part of the place. They could look around, see if they can find anyone. But no. She has no way of being so certain that it would be pointless, and yet she is. 

Again, they're too late. 

Very possibly he was never here at all. 

Very possibly she was an idiot to ever think he might have been. 

~ 

They make camp in a small copse of trees outside the blast-zone, where the grass is still green. They're half surrounded by a bed of geraniums, full and pink-red. In the light of the fire he's built, the pink fades into the crimson and the blossoms look almost like fire themselves. The branches above them are leached of color. The stars are brilliant and cold. 

It's not safe here. They should be inside, somewhere they can barricade. Possibly there _would_ have been a place in one of the less badly damaged parts where they could hole up. But he picked this spot and built the fire without speaking to her, without looking at her, and she let him and didn't protest. She helped him find branches, though he didn't ask her to do so. She sat back and hugged her knees to her chest, and watched as he lit the pathetic little crumpled mound of printer paper with his lighter. 

So much paper. Everywhere, so much. It now strikes her as the most fabulous waste. 

Granola bars. For her, at least; she doesn't want to eat them, doesn't want to eat _anything_ if the truth be told, but she does, and they crumble dry into her mouth to be washed down by more of that powdered iced tea, which she filled a bottle with before they left the house. 

He doesn't eat. Doesn't drink. He stares into the fire, his arms resting on his bent knees, his face unreadable. 

She's not sure he's blinking. 

She set him up for this, she understands. Someone sympathetic to her would probably say that it wasn't her fault, and they would be wrong. She gave him this idea, and it was a stupid idea to begin with, but he grabbed it and held onto it just as eagerly as she did. Because he's like her, at least in this way. He wanted things to be better than they were. He wanted things to be all right. Needed it. 

He wanted to have faith. He did. Now it's been yanked out from under him and he's fallen. 

She doesn't feel guilty, not precisely. She feels _heavy._ She feels as if her veins have filled with lead, her limbs too weighted down to move even though she's moving. She had faith too. She's fallen, though probably not as hard as he has. There was supposed to be an answer, _some_ sort of direction. She’ll likely never know what went so terribly wrong here, and it doesn't matter, because the result is the same either way. 

They could go back downtown. They could look some more. It's an option. She's trying to work up the courage to offer it- 

And then he reaches over to his pack and pulls out one of the Snickers, slowly tears open the wrapper, and begins to eat it. He chews like he's eating wet ashes. 

That tells her everything. 

~ 

“He's alive.” 

She jumps, sucks in a breath, is instantly embarrassed. She had begun to drowse, her head sinking toward her knees; now she's upright and trembling with a flood of adrenaline, and focusing on his face over the fire. The fire itself has died down a good bit, though it's not quite coals, and the lines of his features are hard and jagged, his eyes obscured by darkness. 

She wonders if she dreamed it. But he speaks again, repeats in that same low, flat tone. 

“He's alive.” 

_How do you know?_ But she won't ask that. She's known plenty of things in the last couple of days which she had no right to know. She hasn't doubted. She won't doubt this time, either - or she won't doubt that _he_ believes it, and for all practical intents and purposes, his belief is all that matters. 

She pushes her matted hair back from her face. Christ, she's so disgusting. “What d’you wanna do?” 

He doesn't respond. Lowers his face. His fingers are twitching, she notes, their tips passing over and over each thumb as if he's rolling a bead between them. 

So she'll say it after all. “Do you wanna go back and look for him some more?” 

He shakes his head, doesn't look up at her. “He's gone.” 

She's bewildered. It's incongruous. The two statements shouldn't go together, or they shouldn't go together in a way that pushes him toward the decision he seems to have come to. If Merle is alive… “So… Wait. He's alive, but you don't wanna keep lookin’?” 

“He's gone,” Daryl says again, as if that should be enough of an explanation. Enough of a _reason._ Finally he raises his head and meets her eyes, and she can see into his. And she gets it. It's not good, it's something she could dispute, but she gets it, because in those eyes she sees the same unutterable heaviness that's settled itself into her. Yes, Merle is alive, _but he’s gone,_ and there's no more track, no trail to follow, and they can't search an entire city of walking corpses. 

It's not exactly the same heaviness as hers after all. She's exhausted, yes. 

He's despairing. 

For the first time, she grasps that it would be easier on him if he was sure Merle was dead. 

“I'm sorry,” she whispers, and he shakes his head again, more violently, and scrubs a hand over his eyes as his mouth twists. He's fighting to keep from bursting into goddamn _tears_ right in front of her, and if he starts crying, she's genuinely not sure she'll be able to keep from starting up herself. 

And then what a fine state they'll be in. 

“Come home with me.” 

It shocks her, that she says it. And it's also the only thing she _can_ say at this point. He's not exactly the kind of man Daddy would take to, not someone Mama or Maggie or Shawn would think much of, and the odds are excellent that this is a horrible idea and will end unpleasantly for everyone involved. 

But as far as she can tell, he has nowhere else to go. 

For Daryl’s part, he's just looking at her, his teeth working at his bottom lip. He actually doesn't appear as shocked as she feels. Instead she gets the sense that he's mulling the offer over, working it through his head. Not with any great enthusiasm, but she imagines that enthusiasm for anything would probably be antithetical to him right now. 

“Why?” 

“‘cause you helped me.” True enough. “We got plenty of room. It's a big house. It's a farm,” she adds, though why that particular detail matters is a mystery to her. “It's way out in the country, it's gotta be safe. Safer than here anyway.” 

He raises a hand, chews at his thumbnail. Looks away. “Why the fuck didn't you say somethin’ about it before?” 

Not angry. He really is confused. After a few seconds she comprehends why: he very reasonably would have guessed that it would be the first thing she'd ask for - to be taken home. But she hadn't mentioned it at all. 

She shrugs. “I dunno, it didn't… It just didn't come up, and we were lookin’ for your brother, and I didn't-” 

“You didn't wanna get under my skin,” he says quietly. “You didn't wanna give me no reason to ditch you.” 

_Yes._ “Yeah.” Ultimately, that's the core of the truth. If she denies it, even if she lies unusually well, he’ll know. He's keen. She's more than sure of that now. She bites her lip, digs the toes of her boots into the grass, and smiles crookedly. She doesn't quite aim it at him. “Like you said, right? I'd never make it out there on my own.” 

He doesn't answer. She doesn't know what to fill the silence with, so she leaves it unfilled, still toeing the grass and pushing up clumps of it. Now and then smoke wafts their way and it overpowers the smell of decay with something somehow worse, acrid and sour, and it stings her eyes. 

Fresh wind rustling up across the field. Gentle nicker of the horses, lowing of the cows. The smell of hay. The complex trill of a mockingbird and the clink of dishes in the kitchen. These are things she wishes she had right now, instead of this. 

So, more honesty. “Where else’re we gonna go?” She does turn the smile on him at last, just as crooked. Maybe a little pained. “C’mon. Mama’s a real good cook.” 

Silence again, and it's silence that she can't remotely read. She sits inside it, shifting her gaze to the fire - legitimately coals now, shimmering and sullen - and releases a long breath. She's no longer worried about this, to the extent that she was when she first issued the invitation. It's possible that he'll refuse, sure. It's possible that he’ll tell her that he doesn't give a shit how good a cook her mama is, that he's not looking to be some kind of _farmhand_ and he's not looking for anyone’s charity. But even if he does say those things, or some version of them, he’ll still take her there. Because it's true: where else are they going to go? 

And because it'll provide him with a guilt-free way to get rid of her. If he's looking for one. 

He exhales, tips his head back and seems to fix his attention on the stars. His fingers ceased their tiny, strange movements a while ago, but they've started up again. 

“Wish to Christ I had a fuckin’ smoke,” he murmurs, and grimaces. “Should’ve looked for some when I was gettin’ the candy. Stupid.” 

Another pause. Then he looks down, plucks one of the Snickers wrappers from out of the grass, and tosses it onto the coals. A single minuscule flame leaps from its end and the whole thing begins to disintegrate rather than burn, collapsing in on itself as it flakes away to nothing. 

“Sure.” He sighs again. “Fine. Whatever.” 

Her smile returns, still crooked but perhaps a bit less weary. Less pained, anyway. What's washing through her isn't precisely relief, but it's close. “Okay. Great.” 

“I ain't stayin’.” 

As she expected. “Ain't like they're gonna make you.” 

He grunts, says nothing else. He's still mute when sleep overtakes her and she curls up on her side, her pack serving as a fairly poor pillow. If she was less tired, the discomfort would matter. As it is, tomorrow - or maybe the day after, depending on how bad the roads are - she’ll be in her own bed with her own pillow, with the smell of hay and those sweetly familiar sounds, and even if the world remains a mess, this part of the nightmare will be over. 

And who knows what’ll happen when he sees the place. He might decide he wants to stick around for a while after all. Which, she's dimly surprised to realize, she doesn't hate the idea of. 

Who knows.


	9. I'm hitching a ride out of this no-good town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taking final leave of Atlanta, Daryl and Beth hit the road for the farm. The road, however, has other ideas, and supplies some very unexpected meetings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's interesting the degree to which I'm both straying from the source material here and also keeping to it almost to the letter in some places. I may end up doing more sheer leg-work _research_ for this thing than for any other fic I've written. I dunno. I think it might get weird. 
> 
> Hell, it's already pretty weird.
> 
> Sorry for the slow updates. If you care, [this is why,](http://dynamicsymmetry.tumblr.com/post/169742548511/update-on-my-current-workload-re-fic-updates) and why they're unfortunately likely to continue at that pace. Though I do have the beginning of the next chapter already written. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting and everything. Again, this is intimidating af and you are directly assisting me in keeping it going. ❤️

 

 

**Part 2: What Lies Ahead  
**

 

 

> _Allons! we must not stop here,  
>  However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here,  
>  However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here,  
>  However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while._
> 
> —Walt Whitman, "Song of the Open Road"

 

 

On the highway out of the city, she looks back once, and only once.

Only for a few seconds. It's all she can bear. Then she has to face forward again, her eyes squeezed shut against the sting. It takes her a few seconds to realize that her brow is pressed against Daryl’s broad back, her arms tightening around his waist. Once again he stiffens, and once again it's brief.

She shoves the awkwardness aside. She doesn't even really have to shove; it slips away, and like a curtain it exposes what it was covering: the corpse of Atlanta, still and silent and smoldering in places, a few of its proud towers in ruins, the outbound lanes choked with an eternal motionless traffic jam. The inbound lanes down which they're roaring are wide open and empty, and in comparison to everything else she's seen in the last few days, they look as clean and bleached as old bone.

Roads of the dead in a land of the dead.

It's no longer horrifying to her. It's just so inexpressibly sad.

She's never had much of an attachment to Atlanta, emotional or otherwise. Never spent a ton of time here, never been all that close to anyone else who has - Karen came into town to have her scandalous baby, but she definitely doesn't count. No, Beth is a Small Town Farm Girl, from birth to now, and she's never wanted to be anything else. It's simply that Atlanta has always been _there,_ far too big and solid and full of people to be anything short of permanent. Small towns could wither and die. Happened all the time. But Atlanta wouldn't die. Atlanta would keep on getting bigger and bigger, gleaming and pulsing with life.

She was so certain. She was so certain about so many things.

She was wrong about almost all of them.

Except him. She doesn't appear to have been wrong about him. And that's something, regardless. Hardly anyone she knows would consider him _good,_ and he's a jerk no matter what else might be true about him, but he hasn't abandoned her or abused her or demanded… _things_ from her, and she guesses she would have found out by now if he was inclined to try any of the three, separately or together.

Daryl is a good man.

Good enough for now, anyway.

~

As with the CDC, it takes them a while - longer than the sheer distance should justify. By now it doesn't remotely surprise him. This is a world in which not only will things be more difficult but also they'll likely take longer. Moving around, finding food, getting something as simple as drinkable water. Patience is going to be a special virtue.

Patience is something Daryl has always been both surprisingly long on and dangerously short of.

So it takes a while, involves some detours, and once they get lost for a bit. But all things considered, they're doing okay. Which is why it pisses him off as much as it does when they hit the jam.

“Aw, shit.” He slows the bike, stops it, keeps it stationary with the engine grumbling while he surveys the sea of parked cars ahead of them. Far as the fucking eye can see, metal and glass winking prettily in the late afternoon sun. Probably a way through or around, might not even be as hard as it looks, but even so. It's not like he was in the best mood to begin with. “Aw, _shit._ ”

“What?” Beth shifts against his back; she sounds slightly groggy, and he realizes she had begun to doze. “What's-”

She cuts herself off, and he knows she's seen what he's seeing, and she understands what it means. They've run into jams before, it's not that this is unexpected, but this is the first time the cars have sat this thick with no obvious detour. How far back was the last turn-off? No fucking clue. And she's been the one providing him with directions.

But of course she’ll ask anyway. “Can we go around?”

He cranes his neck. “Maybe. Gotta see.” Another few seconds of meditation; he's considering the situation without really _considering_ it, merely taking it in and letting his mind go wherever it’s inclined to wander.

No good options, really. Only one that stands out at the moment.

He cuts the engine, stuffs the keys into his pocket, climbs off the bike and goes about unstrapping his bow. Beth climbs off as well and simply stands there, watching him. When he glances up her face is quizzical.

“Are we walkin’?”

“Scoutin’ ahead. I ain't leavin’ the bike behind, girl, you think I'm stupid?” He slings the bow over his back and starts walking, heading for the widest gap between a battered minivan and a slick little blue compact. “You comin’ or stayin’?”

“I'm comin’,” she replies, the scuffle of her boots on the blacktop as she follows him, and what he feels stir in his gut might be somewhere in the territory of relief. If she'd wanted to stay with the bike, he wouldn't have argued with her. She can do whatever the fuck she wants, and there would have been some undeniable advantages. But given that she chose the other way…

It's just good, is all.

As with all the cars they've passed, there's a fairly even mix of abandoned and occupied by purple-gray mummies - some of them squirming slowly and growling and some apparently dead for real. Fewer of the former; from what he's seen, a lot of people stuck in jams made at least an attempt to flee their trapped vehicles, although not all of them made it, and here and there among and under the cars are scattered shreds of rotting flesh and cloth, an arm, a leg, a tangle of intestine. No nausea, not anymore. He catches Beth’s face twisting, but he'd guess that's more about the sudden increase in the odor of decay more than anything else, and as he keeps being reminded, even that turns out to be something you get used to quicker than you ever would have believed.

Quiet, except for the geeks and the trill of a couple of robins off in the trees, the thrum of cicadas. His bow is up, cocked, and he was gratified to notice that she's got her gun drawn, but at least so far, there's no other threat that he can detect. The cars also aren't as densely packed as he first feared, and in fact they might be able to squeeze through a good bit further than he-

His arm snaps back and he seizes Beth’s shoulder, shoves her down into a crouch beside him. She lets out a surprised little squeak - clams up fast, but he still hisses at her.

“ _Shut the fuck up._ ”

Voices. More than one. Not right nearby but also not that distant. If they're within earshot, that doesn't mean he and Beth are within sightline, and he would swear he didn't see anyone, but regardless…

The voices are raised. Agitated. Tense.

_Shot? What do you mean, shot?_

_I don't know, Dale, I wasn't there. All I know is this chick rode out of nowhere like Zorro on a horse and took Lori._

_You_ let _her?_

He touches Beth’s arm again, lighter, and nods ahead at another gap between the cars. The bow goes back over his shoulder, knife unsheathed and in his hand, and when he looks at her again, she nods.

Solid. She's a little rattled but that's all.

And all at once he's not unhappy that she's the one at his back.

Low as he can, quiet as he can, he creeps forward, listening with everything he's got. They're closer than he realized - how the fuck didn't he _see_ them? If they'd seen him and Beth, he's guessing they'd be letting on, but even so.

Two voices. No, three. Two men…a woman? She's quieter. One of the men sounds like he might be closer to Old Fart status than not. Might be good, if the rest of this turns out to be bad. Or it might not matter one fucking bit.

_She knew Lori’s name, and Carl’s. Said Rick sent her._

_I heard screams- Was that you?_

_She got attacked by a walker. It was a close call._

Walker. Interesting.

_Andrea, are you all right?_

Long pause. Feels like ages. There's something ugly in that pause, something aching and strained and angry, and he’s never seen this _Andrea_ in his life, but all the same he can almost see her face, the tight set of her mouth, the hardness of her eyes as she gives _Dale_ his answer without uttering a word.

Then a door slams. Not a car door. Doesn't sound like a van, either. RV? Something like that.

Dale again. _Any sign of her?_

_No._ Quieter. Another woman. Not Andrea. Quiet and weary; she's not crying now but she was, and not long ago. _She’s… She’s just…_

Still no tears. The woman hasn't been overtaken by fresh weeping but instead by sheer exhaustion. He knows that silence, and what it sounds like when it curls around your voice and drags you down into itself. What it sounds like when it's not anywhere near the first time it's taken you.

He knows that sound far too well, and for reasons he can't quite pin down, something deep inside him twists.

Okay. Take inventory. Two males here at least: Dale and the other. At least three females: Andrea and the other, and the one they're looking for. Two more males, potentially: Rick and Carl. And one other female: Lori.

And the chick on the horse.

If these people are bad news, and they get spotted, he and Beth are up the proverbial creek of shit sans the proverbial paddle. He can hold his own well enough to manage a fight wherein he's outnumbered, but there's Beth, and up against as many as nine?

But these people aren't bad news. Or at least it's not that simple. He has no way of knowing that, not just by their voices, and yet he does.

It’s almost certainly a bad idea. It's stupid. Merle is shaking his head in scornful exasperation - _You_ _dumbass, you lookin’ to make_ friends _in the middle of this shit? You think hookin’ up with anyone else is gonna be anythin’ other than a problem?_ But all the same he's rising to his feet, gesturing at Beth to stay put, and unshouldering his bow as he moves cautiously forward.

_The fuck’re you even lookin’ to get outta this, boy? What’re you expectin’ from ‘em? Think they'll throw you some scraps, take you home with ‘em? Ain't gonna be nothin’ but trouble. If they don't just fuckin’ shoot you, be like her times ten._

He clenches his jaw and moves a little faster, as if he's trying to make a point. He doesn't _know_ what he wants out of this, okay? He didn't think it through all that carefully. This isn't a measured decision driven by pure rationality. He's doing this because his other options were to stay there or turn around and ride in the other direction, and neither felt…

Neither felt right.

He can see them now. RV, like he thought. Old Fart standing by it, wearing a rumpled white bucket hat and carrying a rifle in his hands. Still no threat; as Daryl gets closer he notes that the guy doesn't look comfortable with it, doesn't look like he's looking forward to using it. Doesn't look happy, either. None of them do - Chinese kid wearing a dirty baseball cap and appearing as if he doesn't know what the hell to do with himself, and the other woman. She's half sitting against the railing between the road and the ditch, bent over her knees. Every part of her sagging, deflated as a balloon.

These people aren't a gang of damn bandits. They're in trouble. Something has happened, and it's not good.

And for the first time, he really _does_ feel like it might be best to turn right the fuck around and walk in the other direction as fast as he possibly can. Because yeah, a group of people in a literal and figurative jam - maybe Merle isn't wrong.

In trouble, like she was. Trouble times ten.

Except then the Chinese kid is raising his head and blinking, his face tensing, shoving himself off the car’s hood he's leaning against and pointing. “Uh, Dale? There's. There’s a guy.”

“What?” Dale whirls around - inasmuch as a geezer with a bit of a gut can _whirl_ \- and, age and gut or no, he's not wasting any time in bringing up the rifle. “Whoa! You! You just stop right there!”

Reasonable demand. He does, though the bow doesn't budge. Not aiming at anything, not yet, but telegraphing that he’s perfectly capable. “I ain't lookin’ for no trouble.”

“If you mean that, how about you put that thing down.” His voice is quavering, but what's at the core of it isn't exactly soft. It would be stupid to write him off as some creaky old asshole with a rifle he can barely use. Be stupid to write any of them off as anything.

“Yeah, I think I'm gonna hang onto it.” But he lowers it a bit more, and then, after another second or two of deliberation, shoulders it and spreads his hands. “Like I said, though. See?”

The woman hasn't straightened, but she's raised her head, her eyes keen behind the weariness. The Chinese kid is stepping forward, though keeping well on the other side of Dale. “Who are you?”

“Got held up in the jam, ways back.” He jerks his head over his shoulder. “Thought I'd scout ahead.”

The kid shakes his head. “That's not exactly an answer.”

_Oh, fine._ Irritating to be badgered into manners, but he'll deal. “Name’s Daryl.”

“Okay, Daryl.” Dale shoots the others a glance, and the door of the RV is inching open, revealing a blond head and wary eyes. “So you're here to, what, just say hi?”

“Somethin’ like that.” He sighs. Turning around and walking away is, he supposes, still technically an option. “Been on my own since Atlanta. You can steer clear of people now or you can check ‘em out. I went with the last one. You got some kinda problem with that, I'll say fuck you and be on my way.”

A pause. The RV door opens wider. All five exchange another glance - and then a groan comes from further back along the RV, thick and pained. Another guy. _Great._ And yet they still aren't acting like people confident in the advantage of numbers, and the unseen author of that groan doesn't sound healthy.

“You could be _scouting ahead_ for a whole other group,” the blond woman - _Andrea_ \- points out. “Telling them to hang back while you feel us out, find out how much of a fight we’re likely to put up before you rob the hell out of us.”

Daryl rolls a shoulder. She's not completely wrong. Good for her. “I ain't.”

“How do we know that?”

“You don't.” He shifts his hand on the bow’s strap. Oddly, he's more comfortable with this exchange now than he was a few minutes ago. “You want me to turn around, walk the fuck away, I ain't gonna argue the point.”

Another pause. Long one. He stands there and lets it play out, content for the moment to see how this goes. The same instinct that told him that these people weren't bad news by default is telling him that, provided he's not a dumbass, this situation is unlikely to go pear-shaped. They'll tell him to fuck off or they won't.

Either way.

Finally, some kind of unspoken agreement seems to pass between all of them, and Dale lowers the rifle slightly. “I'm Dale.”

Daryl grunts. “I know. I heard.”

“Oh. Well, that's…” Dale gestures at the Chinese kid and works his way around. “That’s Glenn, Carol, and Andrea.” Another groan, and an edge of worry flits across Dale’s face. “And that's, uh… That’s T-Dog.”

Daryl grunts again, starts toward them. Still slow, taking it easy, but it's fine, and someone has to be the one to proceed. He peers around Dale at the thick-set Black man slumped against the RV. His bald head is gleaming with sweat, his face and arms, and it doesn't take a medical degree to conclude that it's not the ambient temperature.

“He alright?”

Glenn steps a little closer to him. Not quite protective, but not too far off. “He cut himself.”

He sees the blood at the same time he hears the words, and while he doesn't draw the bow, his hands snap instantly into position. He takes a step back, his gaze shifting from face to face - because how stupid are these people? How clueless, how crazy? Enough of any of the three to let one of their own sicken and turn?

“He wasn't scratched,” Carol says quietly, and straightens, swiping her hands down her face. “Wasn't bit. It's not that.”

Dale grimaces. “It's infected. He needs antibiotics, and we've been looking, but we can't-”

“Antibiotics?”

He freezes. The others are staring, not at him, but past him, surprise on all their faces - T-Dog’s included. He can sympathize. He's surprised too, though probably not as much as he should be, because while this girl has been fairly reliable when it comes to following his instructions when there's life and death at stake…

She clearly has her own ideas about when she should and shouldn't stick her obnoxiously good-natured oar into things, and wouldn't you know it, she's holding true to form.

And now she's going to blithely _give their shit away._

He half turns. She's standing there, bold as you please, her face calm and open and her eyes bright. And, for which he's prepared to give her the barest minimum of credit, her hand on the butt of the gun at her belt.

“We've got some. Stuff for pain, too.”

T-Dog manages a strained and not altogether humorless laugh. “And you gonna just straight-up donate it to the cause?”

“Sure we are.” She shoots Daryl the look of someone who takes it as read that what she says is going to happen is going to happen, and it's precisely that simple. _Oh, for Christ’s sake._ “We've got a whole lot of it. More than just the two of us can use.”

“You son of a bitch,” Andrea says, but Daryl is bemused to see a nearly imperceptible smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “You _were_ lying.”

“Nah. Said I wasn't scoutin’ for a group.” He nods at Beth. “She look like a group to you?”

Glenn breathes a laugh. “Okay. Fair.”

Beth gives him a smile that can only be described as _sunny._ “I'll run back and get ‘em. Gimme a few minutes.”

He watches her go, gnawing his lip. He should probably be more pissed than he is. Truth be told, he's fairly certain she didn't just _show up_ operating on pure naïveté. She had her hand on her gun. She did hang back, at first. She didn't rush in. She almost definitely made like he did. Kept out of sight and listened while he broke the ice, and only emerged once she was sure.

All these opportunities for him to conclude that she's an airheaded little fool, and she keeps not allowing him to take advantage of them.

Well, hell.

He turns back to the group, leans against one of the cars, crosses his arms and looks them over more carefully. “You stuck too?”

Dale sighs. “For now, yeah.”

“Need help gettin’ through?”

“Oh, it's not that.” Dale gestures toward the front of the RV. “We found a path, and we have more than one vehicle. It's just that-”

“We lost someone.” Carol, her voice tight. Laced with those tears she's been crying. “We lost my little girl.”

“Lost? How's that?”

Glenn pulls off his cap, rakes a hand through his hair and exhales. “Walkers scared her and she ran off into the woods. We've been looking, but that was hours ago, and she… Yeah.” His mouth twists. “And T-Dog got hurt, and all that was before Carl got shot.”

For a moment or two Daryl simply looks at them, trying not to crack the hell up. Not that it's actually funny, this litany of woes, except in the darkest possible way it is. One of them would be enough, but of course the world now isn't satisfied with ordinary run-of-the-mill misfortunes. _When it rains it pours piss all over your goddamn head,_ as his mother used to say in her blunter moments.

Which was most of them, by the end.

He whistles. “You've had a hell of a day, aintcha?”

“Someone got shot?” Beth, walking past him with her backpack over her shoulder. She stops in front of Dale and holds it out, scanning the others. “Do they need some of this too?”

“No, they're at some farm.” Glenn slides his cap back on, looking more frazzled than he did a couple of minutes ago, as if running down the events of this _hell of a day_ have brought the full weight of it freshly home to him. “Carl and his dad. And Shane. And Carl’s mom now, too. One of the people from the farm came and got her. It's just, it's this whole thing.”

“Wow.” Beth steps back as Dale takes the pack and unzips it. “Can we do anythin’ else? To help? Daryl was takin’ me home, but.” She shrugs. “We’re here now, I guess we don't have to rush off.”

He watches her, listens. Her tone - upbeat, tiptoeing into cheerful, but firm. The look on her face - still that calm openness. And it occurs to him that while he's seen her in a number of situations at this point, this is the one - sure of her ground and offering her assistance - where she feels most comfortable. Standing here like she is now, and facing him down in the hallway outside the closet where his brother hacked off his own fucking hand.

On the face of it, couldn't be more different. But underneath it's the same damn thing.

She should want to get home as fast as the bike can carry her, and instead she's asking these complete strangers if she can help.

If _they_ can help, because she's also apparently comfortable making his life choices for him.

Carol looks at her, glances at the rest of them, returns her gaze to Beth and clears her throat. When she speaks, her voice is steadier. “You could help look. For Sophia, I mean. I don't think we can-”

“Carol,” Andrea says gently. “It's getting dark. We’re not going to-”

“That’s the _point.”_ All the steadiness has abruptly vanished, her pitch rising alarmingly. “She's _out there all by herself,_ and you can't expect me to just _sit here_ and do _nothing,_ for God’s sake, _she's a child!_ ”

Andrea lifts her hands, placating. “I wasn't saying we wouldn't keep looking. _No one’s_ saying that. We’re not going to get anywhere in the dark, is all. Look, if we’re going to do this, we need to do it right.” She moves over to Carol, lays a gentle hand on her shoulder. Carol stiffens but doesn't pull away, and lowers her head, her eyes squeezed shut. “She's a smart kid. She’ll have found somewhere safe and she’ll be staying put too. First thing tomorrow, we’ll get back to it.”

“It's more complicated than that now,” Dale says hesitantly. “Since Carl got shot, and T-Dog’s still in a bad way, even if we have the meds to treat him with… The group is _split,_ and the longer we stay that way, the more dangerous everything gets.” He turns to Glenn. “I think we should get to that farm if we can. You said someone came for Lori on a horse?”

“That's right.” Glenn’s smile is crooked. “This girl just came riding up, all-” He makes a vague gesture that Daryl can't interpret. Though there's something about the way he says _girl_ that might indicate a clue.

Dale shifts from foot to foot, clearly close to impatience. “Did she tell you how to get there?”

“Yeah. She said backtrack and find this other road, go two miles, look for a mailbox.” He pauses a beat, thinking. “She said the name on it would be _Greene_.”

Beth’s gasp is sudden and sharp and it cuts through the air. Silence cuts with it, and every gaze lands on her. And before she speaks, Daryl already knows what she's going to say - and he also knows that yes, Merle was right, and one way or another he's fucked. He might be able to convince himself otherwise, might even be able to extricate himself one way or another, but he's fallen into something he can't remotely control, sucked down like the quicksand every one of that litany of woes represents, and he's fucked.

“That girl on the horse.” She swallows, and there's as much delight and relief in her tone as astonishment. “That's Maggie. That's my sister.”

 


	10. you slipped at the start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As far as Beth is concerned, this meeting on the road is downright fortuitous. But of course it's not that simple - for her or for Daryl. And what's waiting for her at home is anything but fortunate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's happening is what always happens when I write these fucking things, which is that events take up so much more wordage than I expected. I thought I might cover about an episode a chapter. Can you imagine? Hahaha I'm incapable of learning 
> 
> Anyway, thanks so much for reading and commenting and all. Probably will be jumping back to Howl after this for a chapter or two but hopefully it won't sit long. ❤️

“Your sister?” Glenn is regarding her with intensified interest. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. I’m Beth Greene. If you need to get to the farm, I can show you.” She looks around at the cars, the sheen of metal changing shades from silver to gold in the sinking light. It all feels so oddly… _intentional_. As if this previously problematic traffic jam was placed to throw them all together. Right here, right now. “That's not the way we were goin’ at first, but it's not like we’re goin’ that way now anyway. It's a little longer but it's easy.”

Glenn glances at Carol and Andrea. “Dale?”

Dale turns the strap of the pack in his hand, almost wringing it, and looks at the man slumped beside him. “Either way, we need to get T-Dog to a doctor if we can, so if there's one at the farm—”

“Daddy.” She hesitates then, because it hits her, how the next few words are going to sound. But it's not like they won't find out anyway. And besides, it shouldn't _matter_. “He's a vet.”

Andrea blinks at her. “A vet?”

“It's doctorin’,” she says, trying not to sound too defensive and not entirely succeeding. “Sick is sick.”

“Yeah,” Daryl murmurs dryly from behind her. “Get your homeboy there tested for foot-and-mouth.”

Maybe he doesn't mean it to sting. Probably it _shouldn't_ sting, not this much. But it does, and she shoots him a glare, biting back something snappish—something she actually hasn't thought of, though she'd sure as hell figure it out.

It's Daddy. Daddy, warm and quiet and good with his hands, somehow always able to soothe the most distressed dog and the most agitated horse, and she knows it's childish but she can well remember a time when she genuinely believed he could do anything, and only now is she understanding that part of her had begun to worry that she wouldn't see him again. That she would get to the farm and he would be—

If Daddy is involved in this, it'll be all right.

And screw whatever Daryl says. Whether or not it's just some bad idea of a joke.

T-Dog coughs, a nasty rattling sound that sends a twinge of sympathy through her gut. “Look, man… We’re not exactly in a position to get picky, you know what I'm sayin’? I'm sure as hell not particular.”

“Yeah,” Glenn adds. “She's right. Sick is sick and a doctor is a doctor, at least right now.”

Dale nods, as if he's decided something. Something he doesn't look happy about, but she guesses there are any number of reasons to be unhappy about any number of things. “Alright. Carol, we’ll stay here overnight with the RV, give it a little longer. Make another pass in the morning. No matter what, we won't—”

“We won't stop looking,” Andrea finishes quietly. “I swear, we won't.”

Dale turns. “Glenn, you take T-Dog and Beth in Carol’s Cherokee. Get to the farm, meet up with everyone. Get his arm looked at.”

“Wait.” Glenn raises a hand, looks around at all of them. “Why’s it always gotta be me?”

“Because,” Dale says, and appears at once so fiercely determined and so flustered that Beth has to hide a faint smile behind her hand. Maybe she met these people less than fifteen minutes ago, but she's pretty sure she likes them. “I have to stay with the RV, and we need Andrea’s help. You can—”

“Oh fine, fine.” Glenn moves to T-Dog, slips his shoulder under the larger man’s arm. “C’mon.”

“Hey, man.” Grumble that's more of a slurred mutter. “I'm sick, I ain't crippled.” But he allows Glenn to support him, the latter puffing a bit, and together they move clumsily toward the Cherokee.

Beth turns enough to catch an unobtrusive glimpse of Daryl. Suddenly there's a question in the middle of this, a question she probably should have asked sooner. One that twinges her gut again—and she's not altogether certain why. “You're comin’, right? You can follow on the bike, I bet Daddy’d—”

“Nah.” He grunts, glances at Carol, and then away into the deepening shadows beneath the trees. “I’ll stay, help ‘em look.”

“You sure?” Dale’s eyes widen with undisguised surprise.

“Yeah. I been huntin’ since I could fuckin’ walk.”

“You can do that?” Carol is raising her head, and for the first time since Beth heard her speak, she sounds hopeful. Tensely so, gripping by her fingernails, but even so. “You can track her?”

Daryl rolls a shoulder. “Sure. If she left a trail, I can find it. Everythin’ leaves a trail.”

“Hey.” Glenn, calling to Beth from the Cherokee where he's helping T-Dog lie down in the back seat. “You coming or what? I can probably find it on my own but I could use a navigator.”

And why _isn't_ she following him? Why isn't she there already, helping T-Dog or hopping into the front? Why is she merely standing here, switching her gaze from Daryl to Carol, something beneath her breastbone wound up tight? Why isn't she champing at the bit to be _home?_

She is. She really is. She's just. God, she doesn't know.

_I thought you were coming too._

He still is. This isn't a big deal. He didn't say he was taking off. Surely, as soon as they find the little girl and come to join the rest of their people, he’ll tag along with them. What else would he do? Where else would he go?

_Back to Atlanta, for one. Back to his brother._

All right, so even if he did, how exactly is that her business?

“Good luck,” she says softly, and takes the pack from Dale when he holds it out to her, starts toward the Cherokee. When she chances a glance over her shoulder, Daryl still isn’t looking at her. He's not looking at anything at all.

~

It takes a little maneuvering to get the jeep turned around, but when it does they rapidly pick up the pace, and she barely glimpses Daryl’s bike when they pass it, not much more than a low, black shape in the oncoming dusk. The cars thin out and so do the dead, and when the road opens back up she feels a relief she can't completely explain.

Though that tightness in her chest is lingering.

Glenn clears his throat. “So, uh… You just tell me when to turn, alright?”

“Yeah,” she murmurs. She's gazing out the window, her dangling hand gently buffeted by the breeze. Strange, how different it feels now to be in a car. “It's not that far.”

“How long you think before we’re there?”

“About fifteen minutes, maybe? Ten?”

“How about you chill, man?” T-Dog is still attempting to grumble; his pain is audible enough for her to tell that it's mostly bravado. “I'm not gonna die in fifteen fuckin’ minutes.”

“I just wanted to know,” Glenn says, slightly reproachful. “Is it a big farm?”

“Pretty big,” She finally casts a look at him. His eyes are fixed straight ahead; T-Dog almost definitely isn't going to die in fifteen minutes, but Glenn is barely keeping his agitation in check. There's something kind of sweet about that. “Why’re you askin’?”

Glenn shoots her a thin smile. “Wondering if it can handle seven people and two kids. Seven… wait, no. Eight. That guy with you, right?”

“Yeah.”

“He's your, what, your cousin? Friend? Some guy?” Weak humor in his voice—humor, and an odd hesitancy, and it takes her a few more seconds to realize what Glenn _isn’t_ asking her, and why he's not asking it. How it might look to someone else, her with Daryl like she was. Like she _is_. Someone like Daryl, and someone like her, how someone might struggle to make sense of it.

_Boyfriend?_

Only nothing so genteel. The world got ugly in a big damn hurry.

Humor. So she laughs, and it's not faked. It is funny, albeit maybe not quite in the way Glenn means it. Funny—and with fleeting bemusement it hits her how utterly mortified she should probably be at the very thought of someone thinking that. “Friend, I guess. He found me in Atlanta, got me outta some trouble. In the end he said he'd take me home.” She pauses for a moment. “I don't think he has anywhere else to go. I could be wrong, though.”

“He seems like an okay guy.”

“He is.” _Somewhat to my surprise, but hey. There are good people. Not always where you'd expect, either._

“Your sister… She can ride a horse pretty well, can't she?”

She shoots him another look, and it's all she can do at the last minute to keep it from being a sharp one. Not sharp because what he's said is wrong, but because what he said—and how he said it—is ringing in her ears like a bell, and will likely do the same for anyone else who hears it if he does it again. This is someone who wants to ask a long string of questions about someone and is trying to be as casual as possible about it, and there are only a very limited number of reasons why that might be happening.

In the back of her mind, she can actually hear Daryl snickering.

“Yeah,” she says, keeping her tone carefully light. “She's been ridin’ since she was old enough to ride. We all have.”

“You all grew up out here?”

She nods. “Farm’s been in my family for… a really long time. Turn here,” she adds, gesturing, and Glenn turns. There's a bit of a jolt in it, too, as if his attention had been beginning to wander.

_Oh boy._ There's nothing remotely awkward about this, no. No way.

It's not as if she's eager to change the subject. She gets the feeling that she isn't _half_ as uncomfortable as he is. But it might be doing him a favor. And if a deer plunges out of the trees and right in front of them, it would be good to have him focused. “Where’d y’all come from?”

“Huh? Oh, Atlanta. Same as you. We got outta there a couple days ago.” His mouth draws into a grim line. “A bunch of things went wrong. We lost a lot of people. And we almost got blown up, which isn't a sentence I ever thought I’d say.”

This time when she looks sharply at him she doesn't try to hide it. The statement grabs her head and her attention and yanks both. “Blown up?”

“Yeah. We tried…” He sighs. “We tried going to the CDC. Thought maybe they'd be working on a cure there. Let's just say it didn't work out.”

“You were there? When it was still all in one piece?”

“Uh-huh. Right up until it wasn't anymore. Why?”

“We were there too,” she breathes. “After. I wondered what happened.” She pauses again, her hands now resting on the pack in her lap, fingering one ragged edge of a seam in the fabric. “So people died?”

“Yeah,” he says, his voice almost too low to be heard. “They did.”

“I’m sorry.”

Glenn shrugs, clearly uncomfortable all over again—but it's a very different kind of discomfort, bound up with a tiredness that's all too familiar by this point. So far all she's lost is Karen, and as much as she cared about Karen, Karen hadn't exactly been her brother. Watching Daryl, how he's been… and now this.

_You've been too lucky,_ whispers a tiny voice. Tiny, and run through with poison. She hates it instantly. _You’ve been far too lucky, sweetheart, and sooner or later the bill is going to come due._

“Hey.” Glenn nudges her arm, points. “This is it, right?”

“Yeah.” She sits up a little, pushing her hair back from her face. The mailbox. The drive beyond it. The windmill standing in spindly black lines against a sky lit by the last of the crimson sunset. Suddenly her stomach is fluttering with those proverbial excited butterflies. “Go ahead and turn when you can.”

Home. _Home._

_I made it._

And it's as if she blinks and Glenn is pulling the jeep to a halt in front of the house and she's leaping out almost before it stops, launching herself forward, breaking into a run as the screen door swings open and Maggie steps onto the porch. She has time to see her sister’s eyes widening and then they’re meeting on the steps and she almost knocks Maggie backward with the sheer force of the hug. It's not a hug; she's _clinging,_ tears aching in her throat and stinging in her eyes, and Maggie is whispering _Beth, Beth, oh my God, we thought maybe—_

“Well, you were wrong.” She's laughing through the crying, and so much of it is simply how Maggie’s always felt so much bigger than her, even if she's not _that_ much bigger, and that's always made her feel safe but it never, ever _mattered_ like this before.

At last—though maybe it's only seconds later—she pulls away enough to look up, searching a face just as tear-streaked as hers. “How's Mama and Daddy? How’s Shawn? Is everyone alright?”

That beloved face goes abruptly still. Frozen. Her blood freezes with it.

_No_.

“Come on inside.” Maggie frames Beth’s face with her hands, swiping away her tears with her thumbs, and looks over Beth’s shoulder at the jeep, and T-Dog and Glenn. She doesn't appear surprised by the arrivals. “There's… A lot’s happened. There's some stuff I gotta tell you.”

~

He doesn't watch her pull away. He listens to the sound of the engine as it recedes, watching with half his attention as Carol and Andrea and Dale all hold a conference, huddled together and speaking in tones too low to make out the words. Once Andrea glances over her shoulder at him, and it's not as if he needed confirmation that they're talking about him, but if he did, there it fucking is.

He feels no resentment to speak of. Of course they're talking about him. Of course they're not sure about this random asshole with the bow, looking every bit as disreputable as he truly is, and the fact that he's volunteered to be helpful won't make a ton of difference.

It's only reasonable. He wouldn't trust himself either.

Fuck this, though. He's not going to stand around while they have their little powwow. He clears his throat, jerks his thumb over his shoulder. “I'm gonna head back, get my bike. Only be a few.”

He doesn't wait for acknowledgement. Turns and starts to weave his way through the cars—a lot easier now that he's not trying to be sneaky. Didn't expect this, but what the fuck: he hasn't expected a single part of any of this so far. No one expects the world to end; it just goes ahead and ends. Like a thief in the night, as the traveling revival preacher said. You either roll with it or you don't, and he's made it this far on his ability to roll with every punch that gets thrown his way.

And when he reaches the bike, he stops dead, hand on the handlebar, staring at it like he's never seen it before.

There's more than one way to roll with things. And it already occurred to him, kind of, but now it truly hits him with all the weight of its reality.

He doesn't have to go back.

He doesn't have to go back there, to those strangers who don't trust him. Who probably don't like him and probably won't improve their opinion of him if he sticks around. He's by himself now. Did what he said he'd do, got the girl back to her people. He held up his end and he doesn't owe anyone a damn thing. True, he never gave her the kind of goodbye she certainly would have preferred, knowing her, but again: he held up his end. Maybe it's even better like this. Less awkward. Doesn't have to meet her folks, have some kind of a weird scene where they act grateful for whatever act of heroism they think he's performed in bringing their precious child back to them and all the while are giving him side-eye and casting meaningful glances at the door. _Can't thank you enough, Mr. Dixon. So when are you leaving?_

He can do that now, check out while the checking’s good. No one is here to stop him. No one is here to guilt him out of it. He can just leave.

He can go the fuck back to Atlanta and do what he should have been doing this whole time, which is look for Merle until he finds him alive or finds a corpse.

Because he's alone. And he can be honest enough with himself to admit that that's no fucking good.

He raises his head, gazes down the road, down the way the two of them came. Full dark is rapidly approaching now—seems like the nights come on faster than they used to, even in the middle of summer—and all the shadows look like things he could slip away into. Almost inviting. Because if he returns to those people, helps them find the girl—

The girl. The little girl, lost in the deep dark woods.

A breath forces itself out of him, and he grits his teeth and looks down at his boots, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. The little girl, lost in a world profoundly hostile to little girls—not that it's not profoundly hostile to fucking _everyone_ —and her mother’s sad, tired, frightened eyes.

He knows those eyes.

_Shit_.

~

Maggie stops speaking.

And Beth blinks at her, and then stops being able to blink at all. Stops being able to do anything. She stares, feeling icy numbness starting at the base of her throat and streaming all through her, crystallizing her nerves. Her tongue is a slab of cold meat in her mouth. Her eyes are frosted glass.

And Maggie is just _looking at her._

She might collapse. She might scream. She might _attack_ Maggie, swinging clumsy fists and howling at her about how stupid she's being, how stupid they're all being, how could they do this, how could they get it so wrong, _how could they._

She might never do anything again.

In the kitchen, far fainter than the distance of one room and a hallway should allow for, she can hear Patricia’s voice as she sees to T-Dog’s arm. Now and then Glenn’s cuts in. She can't make out any of the words. She doesn't care. Upstairs, for now, is all silence.

In some of those rooms, silence forever.

Finally, in a whisper dry as old bones: “You didn't.”

“Beth—”

“You _didn't_.” Still a whisper, but it slices through her like a razor blade, hurts with the kind of high, thin pain that she felt the first time she cut her leg shaving. “Tell me you didn't. _Tell me you didn't do that_.”

That it's the worst part, is the worst part. Not what happened before. Not now it ended. Not how in the span of a few short days they've been taken away from her, _ripped_ away from her, and she never got a chance to say goodbye. The cruelty of it. The _viciousness_ of it, of the entire damned world. The room full of dead babies was nothing compared to this, and that's a horrible thing to think, she knows it is, and she also doesn't give a shit.

“You can talk to Daddy about it when he's done up there,” Maggie murmurs. It's gentle, but there's a harshness under it that Beth has never heard before, and she doesn't believe it's entirely directed at her. “He can explain it. He can tell you why.”

“He can…” She trails off—searches Maggie’s face, her eyes, with fresh intensity that burns through the horror. What Maggie has just said, very likely without meaning to. What she's said by what she's leaving unsaid.

_Daddy_ can tell her. Not Maggie. Maggie herself will not be the one to explain.

“You know it's not right,” she breathes. “You know it just as well as I do. Don't you?”

“Beth.”

“ _No_.” She yanks her hand back when Maggie reaches for her, yanks back her whole body, recoils as if Maggie herself is one of the dead, and hates herself for it. “Get away from me. You get the _hell_ away.”

“Beth, _please_.”

But the ice that ran through her has closed itself around her heart and the pleading is nothing to her. She's whirling, nearly sprinting for the front door, exploding out of it so hard that it crashes against the outside wall when she flings it open and pounds down the porch steps and out into the night.

Behind her, she might hear Maggie calling after her. It might be wishful thinking. It might be a nightmare. It's none of those things, and whether or not it's there she shakes it off and sprints toward the last place she wants to be, to see the last thing she wants to see.

It is a nightmare, or at least it's the logic of one. How badly she wants to stop, turn around, run back to the light and the warmth of the house, and try to push aside how hideously wrong it is in there too, with too many people and not enough people all at once, too much light and the warmth of sickness, strange voices echoing down the halls and every second waiting for the as-yet unseen boy to start screaming again. Daddy wouldn't let her go up to see him. Daddy went back up so fast after he pulled her into his arms and held her tight, left her staring after him with her own arms still open for him, wondering if he had ever been there at all.

She can't go back to that. She can't. God. Maybe she could just keep on running, out into the fields and then the forest, back to the road. Run back to him. Leap onto the back of his bike and demand that he take her away from here, take her _anywhere,_ as long as it's as far and as fast as he can.

Take her away from what she's closing in on, the black bulk of it rising over her and blotting out the emerging stars. And now she hears them, that low hissing groan, and she stumbles and almost falls to her knees in the dirt, only just managing to catch herself against the door.

It rattles. Inside there's a pause, as if they're listening, and the groans rise in volume and the door rattles back. Answering her.

_Bethy, sweetheart, please let us out. It's so dark in here. We’re so scared. Please, my little love, please open the door and let us out so I can hug you. So_ we _can. We missed you so much._

_We love you, Beth. You love us too, don't you? You won't leave us alone? The others did. Please._

_Please don't leave us alone._

She does fall. Moonlight spills across the barn doors and rotting fingers snake partway through the crack, wriggling like thick grubs. Her hand pressed against the wood, fingernails hooked and digging in until they splinter, she slowly goes down, slumped forward over her knees and trembling all over as the sobs beat their relentless way out of her. She can't. She can't stay here. She can't bear witness to this obscenity. How Maggie and Daddy can stand to do so, how they can stand to have _done_ it and to keep doing it every second they allow it to continue…

Perhaps they've both gone insane.

Perhaps insanity is the only sane response to a world in which things like this can happen. Perhaps it would be better to follow them into it.

But she doesn't go. She doesn't go anywhere. She remains where she is for a long time, bent double with her arms wrapped around her middle, lowering her upper body until she's almost prostrate, as if in prayer. Could be she _is_ praying, though hell if she knows what for. Hell if she knows whether anyone is listening.

She won't go. She can't. Because where else is there? And it's _Daddy_ and it's _Maggie,_ whatever they've done and whatever they're doing, and she can't abandon them now.

And she's too goddamn chickenshit to do that anyway.

And there's one more part. It's another part that she can fairly call _the worst,_ maybe the worst of all. It's so bad she cringes away from it, squeezing her eyes shut, denying. Knowing she's a fool for it and unable to make it stop.

_What if._

_What if they’re right._

 


	11. show me where this joke got tired

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unable to sleep, Daryl treks into the forest in search of Sophia. A new acquaintance accompanies him. But not everything about this is new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should note at this point that while a lot of the story here is clearly mine, I'm also sticking _extremely_ close to the canon in many respects, which means I'm taking things wholesale from the show. Scenes, dialogue - a significant portion of this thing will likely be almost a straight-up novelization of chunks of the show, with some minor but important tweaks. I'm assuming that no one will think I'm claiming this stuff as my own, but it's in here, and I want that generally clear.
> 
> So, for example: This entire chapter is basically a remix of the show. Like, it's the show. That's what it is, almost word for word and beat for beat. 
> 
> I'm also both somewhat amused and somewhat irritated that I initially thought I might fit an episode into one chapter, when in fact this entire chapter is essentially _one single scene_ from "Save the Last One". I am ridiculous. 
> 
> ❤️

Fucking woman won't stop fucking _crying._

Not loud. She's obviously trying to be subtle about it. But the RV is otherwise silent except for Dale’s quiet snores, and even if she was muffling it ten times better, it would still be perfectly audible.

Lying awake on the floor between the bed in the back and the front seats, staring up at the ceiling and listening to her, Daryl puts in an attempt to wrestle back his impatience—which is actually a good bit more than half-hearted. It's his own damn fault that he took them up on the unexpectedly generous offer to sleep inside the thing. He's not even sure why he said yes in the first place; it was weird as hell that they would trust him to that degree straight off, and he would have been comfortable enough on the concrete in his bedroll, or in the backseat of an empty car. But Carol offered, and Dale and Andrea looked a little dubious but didn't gainsay her, and for some reason he agreed.

Now she won't stop crying, and he wishes to Christ he had passed it up.

Doesn't even make _sense._ He's slept through louder shit. He's slept through blasting TVs and pounding music, fights and fucking on the other side of thin walls. He's slept through Merle staggering in drunk as a skunk with a hooker on each arm. He's slept in his share of cramped backseats if it comes to that, and he's slept in the damn woods with nothing but a nest of moss and leaves for a bed. He's even slept through—

This should be nothing. Yet the more he tries to ignore it, the worse it gets.

It's not even… There isn't that much resemblance. Carol doesn't sound like _her._

But.

Another few minutes. They stretch out. _He_ feels stretched, his breath, his patience. Nothing changes. Even Dale’s snores seem to be increasing in volume and rising in pitch, and at last he shoves himself to his feet and snatches up the bow by its strap, and makes for the door.

He's not making a racket. But he's not trying to mask his movement, either. Dale’s snoring cuts off in a startled snort, and Carol’s sniffling— _finally_ —pauses.

They don't question him, though. Good. He doesn't owe them some kind of fucking explanation. He doesn't have to fill out a goddamn form outlining his movements. He doesn't have to give them a goddamn itinerary.

_Shit._

The second he's out of the RV, he can breathe easier. The noises that take over are a far better kind of familiar—not that anything back in there was familiar, hell—and he's comfortable with them. Crickets, owl, mockingbird trill. More noise, too, and it hits him that part of the problem in the RV was that it wasn't loud _enough._ Not the right way. Not the way that lulls.

It was quiet sleeping inside with Beth, too. But that was different. He's not sure quite how. Not sure how to begin thinking about that, not sure what his reference points would be. It just was.

“What’s up?”

Low voice behind him, the swing of a flashlight’s beam. He doesn't jump; he heard the scuffle of her boot on the pavement two seconds before she spoke. Nevertheless, his breath catches, and he hopes she doesn't notice. Not that he has any reason to give a shit what Andrea thinks of him, but even so.

He turns, half shrugs. “Couldn't sleep.” He jerks his chin ahead. “Thought I’d walk the road. Have a look for the girl.”

She nods. She seems unsurprised. “I’ll come with.”

Which doesn't sound like she's offering him a choice. A gentle lack of wiggle room, but a lack all the same. He exhales. If he argues, he can't see it going well. In purely practical terms, it also isn't certain it's a fight he wants to pick. Might be good to have someone to hold a flashlight, watch his back.

Being on his own out there… Not the most attractive prospect he's ever considered. It's not that he needs someone to hold his hand. It's merely about what's smart.

Nevertheless. “Ain’t you on watch?”

“I'll wake Dale up. It's his shift anyway.” She starts back toward the RV. “Gimme a sec.”

He does. Stands and waits for her, feels the breeze on his face, listens to the soft hoot of the owl. Watches the moonlight gleam across the battered paint and dingy chrome of a glacier of dead cars. This feels like a dream. It all does. Cause and effect aren't working the way he's used to. The logic of events is breaking down.

Shit is just _happening._

Andrea returns to him, flashlight and gun in her hands. “Alright.”

He nods down at the gun. “How good’re you with that?”

She gives him a look. “I'm plenty good enough. We doing this, or what?”

“Yeah. C’mon.” He unshoulders the bow and braces it against the ground, cocks it, lifts it and starts walking. He gestures at the treeline—nothing but an opaque wall of hard shadows in the moonlight. “You wanna take a look in there?”

“Sure. It was the last place we saw her, so.” She steps past him, swings a leg over the guardrail, and directs the beam into the trees, leaves and creaking branches and trunks washed into the same grayish color. Her beam intersects with another: Dale, shining a light from the RV.

Daryl follows her, grunts as he skids down the grassy incline and crunches over loose twigs into the trees. It's nearly alarming, how abruptly and totally the shadows swallow them. “Givin’ her somethin’ to look at? Good idea. Long as it doesn't draw them geeks.”

“Geeks?” Andrea sounds bemused. “That’s what you call them?”

“Seemed like good a name as any. What was it you was sayin’? _Walkers?_ ”

“Yeah.” She's sweeping the flashlight back and forth ahead of them—not too fast to give him a chance to search the ground. Whether or not she means to, good. “I'm not sure where it came from. Just… I dunno, seemed appropriate. That's what they do, right? They walk. Unless you make them stop walking.”

“That’n they eat. You could call ‘em _biters_ or somethin’.”

She breathes a laugh. “You can take that up with the rest of the group, I guess. Anyway, _walkers_ is better than _geeks._ ”

He laughs too. Less of a breath than hers, but it feels good. He's still not sure what the fuck he thinks of these people, is even less sure about what the fuck they think of him, but to his faint wonder, they certainly don't seem hostile on any level, and Andrea…

She's talking to him like he's just a person. Just some guy. Not any better _or_ any worse than anyone else.

It's remotely possible, he supposes, that this wasn't a horrible mistake after all.

For a while they walk in silence. The owl, which now seems to be moving alongside them, hoots into the night as if announcing their passage. Despite the thickness of the dark, the moon filters through the branches, stirs when they stir, catches Andrea’s flashlight and performs a strange dance with it that plays minor havoc with the shadows. It doesn't bother him overmuch; in truth there's not much to see. He saw the girl’s initial track—before they bedded down, he used the last remnants of the daylight to get a look at what he would be searching for tomorrow. Hound dog catching a first whiff of a scent.

But he doesn't see anything like that now. Just the forest. Plain old Georgia forest, same as ever, and in fact, one might almost believe that the world never ended. That he and Andrea could walk back to find an empty road, the moonlit quiet broken only by a periodic car and the lights of distant farmhouses.

Then, some distance away but carrying clearly, the groan of a geek.

A _walker._ Because hey. When in Rome, or any other equivalent.

Andrea turns her head toward the sound, brows knitted. Worried in a distant kind of way. “You think we’re gonna find Sophia?”

“Seriously?” He doesn't try to hide the incredulity. “You’re askin’ me? You just fuckin’ _met_ me, you don't know me from Adam.”

“You're the tracker, though, right? Or whatever?” There's something almost like joviality in her tone—too thin and too tight to count, but she's aiming for the ballpark, and he's not sure what to make of it. “Yeah, seriously. What do you think her chances are?”

Not a question he expected. Not one he's altogether comfortable answering. It feels like it might be some kind of trap, even if not one she meant to set, because perhaps she wants a specific answer from him. Perhaps she wants reassurance. In which case, it's not as if he has to lie about it; he rolls a shoulder, shifting the bow in his hands. “Ain't the mountains of Tibet. It’s Georgia.”

“Yeah, and Georgia’s a big place for a little girl to get lost in. Hell, these woods are big enough.”

“People get lost, they survive. Happens all the time.”

“Daryl.” In the periphery of his vision he catches the _oh come on_ expression to match her voice. “She's only twelve.”

“So? I was younger’n her and I got lost.” Something twists at the corner of his mouth that might, at some point, become a smile. Because this memory _is_ funny, with the benefit of some time and perspective. Sure it is. Funny in its sheer absurdity, funny in how it was basically unremarkable, and funny because sometimes all you can do is laugh. “Nine days in the woods eatin’ berries, wipin’ my ass with poison oak.”

Andrea does laugh—a little puff of surprised amusement. “No kidding? And they found you? What, you get lost camping or something?”

 _Camping._ Now that’s truly hilarious, and when he speaks again, his voice is perfectly light, but suddenly there's a sharp edge beneath the words that he didn't intend to put there and can't quite get around. Except it feels almost like he's throwing the words at her. Almost like some part of him wants them to sting, as if she's done him an injury and he's looking for a way to do her one right back. “Nah. I just went for a damn walk. My old man was off on a bender with some waitress, my brother was doin’ a stint in juvie. Didn't even know I was gone.”

“Oh,” she murmurs, and he thinks _not so funny now, is it, you bitch?_ and kind of wants to drive his own head into a tree. He was wrong. He can't hold a fucking conversation without things tipping sideways. He can’t do people. This is probably a disaster. “Jesus.”

But that lightness is still carrying his voice. Somehow—and please, God, let him be able to maintain it. Keep the light up, keep the sharpness down. Balance it like her flashlight. “Made my own way back. Went straight into the kitchen and made myself a sandwich. No worse for wear.” That weird, twisted smile: he turns it on her, and maybe it's not quite so twisted or quite so weird. He can't be positive, but yeah. “Except my ass itched somethin’ awful.”

For a beat or two she says nothing, and her face is difficult to read, as if she's not completely confident about how she should respond. Then he manages to make that smile widen and she laughs, like he's given her permission, and shakes her head, tucking a strand of blond hair behind her ear. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry, that's a terrible story.”

And suddenly, somehow… it's better. It's still weird as shit, there's still something nasty and sour snaking through his brain and down into his chest and it’s making him as uneasy as anything wandering around out here looking for a snack, but it's better. A little. Though now he's not sure what to say at all.

Then he doesn't have to worry about it, because the groan is a hell of a lot closer, accompanied by the rustling of leaves. Right the fuck in front of them, barely yards away, and he snaps the bow up as she aims her gun and her light both together. He's ready to take down something staggering straight at them, is sure that's what he’ll see and is inwardly cursing himself for letting his attention slip and missing it until now—

But the light falls across a pair of swinging legs, mostly stripped to the bone, jeans little more than bloody rags.

And now the smell is hitting him. Hitting _them:_ that same sick-sweet decay stench which is everywhere now but which retains its potency in concentrated amounts. He wrinkles his nose, blocks his soft palate and breathes through his mouth—and from beside him comes a thick gagging sound as the light lowers.

He turns. Andrea is bent over her knees, one hand covering her mouth and her eyes squeezed shut. “Oh God.”

“Christ, you still thrown by this shit?” There might be a touch of scorn, but only a touch. For the most part he's genuinely surprised. “This ain't nothin’.”

“Yeah, well, to some of us it’s still something.” She partially straightens, raises her head, gags again and looks away. “He hung himself?”

“Looks like.” A flash of white against the bark of the trunk catches his eye; he steps closer, reaches out for the scrap of paper. “Hey, shine the light here for a sec.”

She obliges. He peers, reads. “ _Got bit. Fever hit. World gone to shit. Might as well quit_.” He lets out a dry laugh, looking up into the thing’s distorted, blue-black face. It might say nothing good about him, but there's a hideously whimsical tinge about the whole tableau that he can respect. “Looks like we got us Walt fuckin’ Whitman here.”

Andrea’s voice is equally dry, and still somewhat muffled. “Charming.”

“Dumbass didn't even know enough to shoot himself in the head.” And gazing up at it, at what used to be _him,_ he feels a thin kind of pity in addition to the blackest species of amusement. Stupid to feel that for someone who was, to be sure, a total dumbass, but it's there all the same. “Turned himself into a big swingin’ piece of meat.”

Andrea’s gag is more like a ragged moan, and he glances back at her. “Y’alright?”

“Trying not to puke.”

He shrugs. In this setting, that degree of restraint seems mildly pointless. “Go ahead if you gotta.”

She waves a hand at him, straightens again. It clearly takes some commitment. “No, I'm fine. Let’s just talk about something else for a minute.” She bobs the light somewhat feebly at his bow. “How’d you learn to shoot?”

The question strikes him as more than a little random; she's obviously floundering as she casts about for alternative topics, which means she really is shaken by this, and the smell can't be all of it. Once more, he wonders at it. What she might have seen since this all began, and what she might not have seen.

Well, fuck that. He’s not giving her his goddamn autobiography; he’s done more of than that already tonight than he ever would have expected. “Gotta eat. That’s one thing these _walkers_ and us have in common.” He turns back to the hanged man. “I guess we’re the closest he's been to food since he turned. Hangin’ up there like a big piñata.”

Andrea is making increasingly distressed noises. He ignores her, pushes ahead. “Look, the other geeks came and ate all the flesh off his legs. You think they did that before, or after he turned? You think they ever eat each other when they—”

The noises rise to a crescendo, and she barely manages to hobble a few feet away before she's spewing up whatever served as dinner, hands braced on her knees. Good thing she's got the ponytail, he thinks, because he's not especially inclined to hold her hair for her.

Yeah, it's mean. But he's an asshole, so.

_Are you?_

Andrea is lifting her head and wiping her mouth, features twisted into a severe grimace. “I thought we were changing the subject.”

He simply looks at her. “Call that payback for laughin’ about my itchy ass.”

He says it completely deadpan. Might be with nothing but that behind it; he's honestly not sure. He feels like he's standing with one foot on both sides of a line, and what that line means and what constitutes those two spaces, fuck if he knows. He's just standing here, looking at her, and waiting for something. Fuck knows what that is, too.

And then, like before, she's laughing. It's good-natured, though a bit rough around the edges—puking up one’s guts has a way of doing that—and more than a little rueful. It's a _okay, yeah, fair enough_ kind of laugh, and in spite of himself, he feels yet another smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.

Everything about this evening has been all _kinds_ of perplexing.

“C’mon.” He takes a step away from the tree, gestures at the direction they came from. Looks like every other direction, or he guesses it would to most people, but he stopped getting lost in the woods at night when he was eleven years old. Experience is a bitch of a teacher as well as the best one. “Ain't gonna find nothin’ else tonight. Let’s head back.”

Andrea hesitates, glances at the hanging walker. “You're gonna just leave him there like that?”

“Why not? He ain't hurtin’ nobody.”

She purses her lips and passes the light back up the dangling body to that awful face, all her squeamishness seeming oddly dissipated. “Just seems wrong. It's not what he wanted.”

Fuck. His stomach sinks about a third of the way to his shoes. Fuck, here's another one. One of _her_ was enough, and now he's fallen in with at least one more. Birds flock together, so probably they're _all_ like this, all with delicate sensibilities, all operating according some kind of framework for respectable behavior that would have worked fine in a world that didn't die an ugly death weeks ago.

Should have taken the bike and gotten out of dodge. Should have kept things simple.

_Not too late for that._

But it is. It’s been too late for days.

He sighs. “I ain't wastin’ an arrow on him.”

“Daryl—”

Abruptly she sounds like she's nearly pleading _,_ and that throws him. Could be Andrea is another version of _her,_ absolutely, thinking the geeks deserve last rites and a proper Christian burial complete with hymns, but Beth didn't plead with him to put the thing in the hospital bed out of the misery it likely didn't even possess. Beth straight-up demanded that he do it.

Now that he thinks about it, he doesn't recall Beth ever saying _please_ at all.

There's something else here.

Doesn't mean he's backing down a second time. An arrow is an arrow. “Asshole did too get what he wanted. He made his choice, opted out. Nah.” He turns, walks past her toward the dark. “Let ‘im hang.”

“ _Daryl._ ”

He stops dead. Practically whirls. His patience is as thin as tissue paper at this point, but it's not only that. She isn't merely pleading; she's actually _upset,_ shaken up and deeply so, and sure, he's an asshole, but he's also a _curious_ asshole when there's something to get that he doesn't get. Gotten him into trouble more than once, is very possibly getting him into trouble again, but self-control has never been one of his few virtues.

“Shit, you care so much, you fuckin’ do it yourself.”

“I can't. The shot could draw them, you know that. And it’ll freak out Dale.” And something more, something that's beating at the inside of her skin, trying to bust out despite all her best efforts to keep it in.

This is not about some random geek. Not remotely.

He narrows his eyes, studies her. “Why _do_ you care so damn much?”

“It's nothing. It's.” She crosses her arms, unhappily defensive, the flashlight’s beam bobbing across the leaf litter. “Look, it's just a thing.”

“Ain't _just_ nothin’.” And this is mean, a whole new kind of mean, but fuck, he spilled his own pitiful can of beans earlier, and maybe he's resenting her for being there for that, for having the audacity to listen in the first place, to this bullshit story about a bullshit thing that happened to him literal decades ago, and never fucking mind that it was his choice to tell her. And he shouldn't _care,_ but oh, there are so many things that he shouldn't do, and he could loose a hundred fucking arrows into the head of that pathetic bastard if it would make his brain fucking _stop._ “You tell me why you care, I’ll do it.”

Silence. She stands, her head bowed, motionless except for the rise and fall of her chest. The light is still mostly confined to the ground, and her finer details are difficult to make out, but he doesn't miss how that rise and fall is stuttering the tiniest bit. Hitching. As if she's holding back sobs.

She's not crying. But she's not far off from it.

For the briefest of uncomfortable moments, he's almost ready to be merciful to her and take it back. Not necessarily give in on the arrow matter, but withdraw the question. Yet before he can say anything, she's raising her head, and when the moonlight falls across her face, there's a hard set to it. Something colder and more pained than determination. Something he doesn't like the look of, because by now he's seen it more times than he can count.

“I almost killed myself.” She releases a heavy breath. “Okay?”

It's not what he expected—not that he knows precisely what he did expect—and he doesn't immediately respond. Because what the fuck do you say to that? Merle would crack a shitty joke, most likely, but he can't see even that working particularly well, and Merle would be doing it simply because that's Merle’s dumbass default when nothing else presents itself. He shifts from foot to foot, and what eventually comes out of his mouth is utterly asinine, though he suspects most responses in this situation would be.

“But you didn't.”

“I didn't.” Her jaw tightens. “I wasn't _allowed_ to.”

This was already a hell of a story, even in its barest hinted outlines, and now it's ten times as much of one. And he could insist on more of it. He could hold out, drag some more of it out of her—even another couple of details. Who didn't allow her? Why? How did it almost happen? Why did she try to do it in the first place?

Could be so many reasons. Could be any damn reason at all.

But no. This is enough. Suddenly he feels like a goddamn heel, like he's taken a swing at her—because he sort of _has_ —and whatever else that nasty, sour thing twisted up inside him might be hissing into the corners of his mind, she doesn't deserve that.

She seems like a good person.

There's enough illumination to aim even without her shining the flashlight for him, and he sighs again, raises the bow—and stops, flicking his gaze back to her. Because actually, there is one question he feels like he can ask. Feels like he _should_ ask, even. It feels important.

It feels like it might not be for him.

“You wanna live now?”

She blinks. “Huh?”

“You heard me. You tried to _opt out,_ somebody didn't let you. So you wanna live now, or what?”

She doesn't answer. She stares at him, and after a second or two she closes her eyes and lowers her head once more. Thinking, possibly.

If so, he gives her the space to think in.

At last she looks up. Looks right at him, right in his eyes, hers locked and clear. That same cold, pained hardness. _She's still bleeding,_ he thinks. _Whatever cut her that bad, it hasn't closed up yet._

“I don't know,” she says softly. Helpless. But short of hopeless. “I don't know if I want to live, or if I have to… or if it's just a habit.”

He arches a brow. “Ain't much of an answer.”

“I know.” The smile she gives him scarcely resembles a smile at all. Once again he glimpses weeping pressing at her seams, and once again he's not impressed with himself. “But it's the only one I’ve got.”

Yes, it is. He doesn't doubt that for a minute. And not a lot is worth much anymore—if it ever was—but if he kicks honesty off that list…

Fuck it. Fuck everything. He raises the bow and sends the arrow home.

She closes her eyes, seems to sag from the shoulders. “Thanks.”

“Waste of an arrow,” he mutters, and without waiting for her he starts back toward the road.

He never especially appreciated deja vu, as a phenomenon. This time is no fucking exception.


	12. I can't get out and it drags me down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exhausted, enraged, and griefstricken, Beth struggles to make sense of the nightmare she's fallen into. But there might be no sense to be made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love writing Beth in most of my fic, but good lord I do love writing her so much in this one. 
> 
> A quick note: I saw that a number of you were (good-naturedly, I know) begging for Beth and Daryl to finally be reunited. That's obviously coming, but just as I'll be exploring their relationship with each other, I'll be spending just as much if not more time exploring the implications for their characters in and of themselves, as well as their relationships with the other members of TF, which means they'll probably be spending long stretches of time apart from each other, at least for the next couple of seasons. I mean, I'm assuming y'all are already aware of that, given that it's how I often roll, but I just want to be clear about it. 
> 
> Oh, and a quicker plug: I'm going to start doing audio episode recaps, so if you enjoy my opinionated rambling about the stupid zombie show, watch [here](http://dynamicsymmetry.tumblr.com) or [here](http://keepsinging.podbean.com) for the first one of those to go up on Monday.
> 
> As usual I'm very bad about responding to comments but thank you so much, guys. Seriously. My head is deep in PhD dissertation and pro-fic at the moment, and hearing from you is so motivating when it's tough to work on this. ❤️

In the end, of course, she goes back.

She doesn't remember getting up. She doesn't remember what finally made it possible for her to do that; she can only guess at the effort it took, clawing her way back up the rattling barn door in reverse of how she raked it with her nails on the way down. Her hands are throbbing, her fingertips; she examined them in the moonlight after she was halfway back to the house and saw how her fingernails are broken and torn, blood welling up black in more than one place.

She blinked and her hands were covered in blood, smeared in it, her skin patchy and peeling off, and she understood that it was her blood, because she was dead and rotting, because she had done what they asked after all. She had somehow broken that padlock and let the doors swing wide, and when Mama and Shawn came out to embrace her, she spread her arms for them and held them tight while they ripped into her throat.

She lowered her hands and closed her eyes, forced her breath to slow and deepen, and didn't move until the world ceased its nauseating revolutions.

So what, is this situation not bad enough as it is? Does her mind feel obligated to impose an even worse version of reality on her?

_Or would that be better?_

One foot in front of the other, she got moving again.

The house is a warm, glowing beacon shining across the grass, so old and so dear, and even if she's dreading what's waiting for her inside almost as much as what's in the barn, she allows it to draw her in. All at once, more than anything, she's tired. Nearly to the point of collapsing, and all she wants now is her bed and the dark and a few hours of unconsciousness, and if God is even vaguely merciful, no dreams.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow she’ll figure out what to do. If there _is_ anything to do.

She's keenly aware that there exists the option of doing nothing at all.

The night is peaceful. The sounds of the dead don't carry. The songs of the crickets are hypnotic and she drifts in them as she walks, her boots rustling through the grass, her exhaustion lifting her up rather than weighing her down. She's lighter. She might float up into the treetops and nest there like a bird, and always be in sight of that beloved house while never setting foot inside it again.

Birds aren't concerned with things like this. The twittering nightjar flitting from branch to branch overhead doesn't give a shit. It might not even know the world has ended. After all, its life has gone on, and as far as she knows, its dead are staying dead.

She's lost her mind. Or her grip is slipping. She drags in a shuddering breath and swipes her hands down her face, her battered fingertips trembling. How Daddy and Maggie have stayed as sane as they appear, how they're just going on with it like any of it is bearable…

She's going to have to put it away, all the screaming she might do, the things she might hurl against the walls. At least for a night. Long enough to sleep. Tomorrow, if she's still feeling it, maybe she can go crazy.

There are people on the porch.

She halts. Freezes. She's close enough to see them, but possibly they haven't seen her yet. They don't sound as if they have; they're not looking toward her and they're talking in low voices, _intense_ voices, and she doesn't need to make out what they're saying to take a solid guess at who they are.

There's the unseen boy. There are also his unseen parents. Seen, now.

She considers for a few seconds. Then she darts into the shadows beneath one of the spreading oaks and sets out in a wider arc, moving quickly and silently from patch of darkness to patch of darkness like hopping across the stones in a stream. She's not certain why she feels the impulse to sneak, why she's obeying it. She also isn't especially curious about her own motivations. Might be as simple as a desire to know what the hell is the deal with these people, and with more level honesty than they would allow if they knew she was there.

Might be as simple as not being able to field even the most casual questions about who she is and what she's doing out here without bursting into tears.

She reaches the side of the house that runs out of their direct view, an unlit section of porch and ground. After another moment to think on her approach, she drops into a crouch and creeps closer toward where the porch wraps around to the front. A flowerbed runs parallel to the railing—Mama’s flowers, her pink begonias and red impatiens, and she's trampling on them for no good reason, oh _God_ —and the earth is many times turned over, soft and springy, and it absorbs the sound of her movement perfectly.

She stops, lowers herself onto the ground, draws her knees against her chest and listens.

“Maybe this isn't a world for children anymore.”

The woman. Exhausted, shaking—literally, and Beth imagines her muscles trembling to match her voice, her shoulders slumped and her head down, and she sympathizes so hard it hurts. It’s like looking at an inner mirror.

Far too much like that.

“Yeah, well, we have a child. Carl is in this world now.” The man. Low, just as tired, but clearly trying to bear up under it. Trying to seem strong. Not succeeding very well, and if she’s unconvinced this fast, no way his wife is buying it.

 _Just stop_. With a flat kind of jolt in her attention, she realizes that she's mouthing the words, though not so much as breathing them. _Stop pretending. Stop trying. Be as broken as you are._

“Maybe he shouldn't be.” The woman is shaking worse now. “Maybe this is how it's supposed to be.”

“You can't mean that.” Aghast. He's still attempting to maintain the veneer of control, but it's beginning to slide, though when he speaks again he's picked himself up a bit, evened himself out. He's talking like he thinks it was a single break in her, and he can snap her out of it. “Okay. Alright. Look, I can understand that thought crossing your mind.”

She makes a noise that might be a laugh, something gone anemic with despair. Blood-drained as he must be at the moment, if what Maggie said is accurate. “It didn't _cross my mind,_ Rick. I can't stop thinking it. Why do we want Carl to live in this world? To have this life?” The shuffle of her footsteps on the boards; stepping away from him. Or maybe turning. “So he can see more people torn apart in front of him? So that he can be hungry and scared for however long he has before he…” She trails off. Beth feels a species of dull bemusement. With the little boy up there in that bed, so close to death, and she's talking about it right now, and yet she can't bring herself to say it.

Talking like she almost prefers it, and yet she can't put it into words and give it that degree of reality.

The woman is still going, the syllables tripping over each other as they pour out of her. “So he can run and run and _run_ and run and then even if he survives he ends up… He ends up just another _animal_ who doesn't know anything except survival? If he…” She’s searching for the strength to speak the name of the shadow lurking at her shoulder. She finds it. “If he dies tonight, it ends for him. Tell me why it would be better another way.”

For a long, long damn moment, Rick doesn't answer. Beth tips her head back and gazes up at the stars circling overhead, and for an instant it's as if time leaps forward like a spurred horse and she can see it, that immense turning, the stars leaving faint trails in her vision as they move. It's beautiful, and it's beautiful in a way she's loved since she was old enough to love anything. This house. This land. This world. She loved it every day. She loved it in a way that became a habit, so she barely noticed it anymore—and she also trusted it, and that was apparently a mistake.

She trusted that it would stay good. Even in Atlanta, even with all that horror all around her, she still trusted that it eventually would be good again. That this was a temporary problem, like a bout of flu, and even if things seemed very terrible now, the world would heal up sooner or later and be right as rain.

The woman is right. This isn't a world for children. Doesn't mean she's right about the other thing, but she's nailed that much to the goddamn wall.

At last Rick speaks. The stars snap back into their places when he does, and Beth closes her eyes. “What changed?”

“What?”

He’s even more tired—or he's feeling it more, the strength to stand against it bleeding away from him. But he’s still talking like he can bring her around, if he says just the right thing. If he understands. “Jenner offered us a way out. You asked him to let us keep trying. You begged him. _For as long as we can,_ you said. What changed?”

 _A way out._ Doesn't take much thinking to decipher the meaning of that. And she remembers Glenn, what he said: that some of their people died back in Atlanta, that something bad happened, and she has no reason to connect these things—this man Jenner and that death—and still, she is. Somehow, in some way she can't quite see, it's all connected.

“There was a moment the other day,” the woman says slowly. “It was just a second… but I forgot Jacqui was dead. I turned around, I wanted to tell her something. I almost said her name. It was just a second and then I remembered. But then I realized she didn't have to see any of it. The highway, the herds, Sophia, Carl getting shot… She didn't… She doesn't have to be afraid anymore. Hungry. Angry. It hasn't stopped _happening,_ Rick. It's like we live with a _knife_ at our throats every second of every day. But Jacqui doesn't. Not anymore. And then… I thought…” She had been racing by the end, the words back in that tumbling cascade, but now she slows, drags in a shuddering breath. “Maybe Jenner was right."

“I don't accept that.” Lower. And yet somehow louder, as if he's seizing her and shaking her with the words alone. “I _can't_ accept that. That man surrendered. It doesn't matter what he said. None of it. You really think it would be better if Carl… If we just _gave up?_ ”

“Tell me why it would be better the other way,” she whispers. “Please.”

If Rick answers, Beth doesn't hear it. Doesn't wait to listen. Long before the woman has finished that awful, gentle plea, she's moving again, pushing back into her crouch and creeping along the railing until she knows she's well out of their line of sight. Then she's on her feet and walking swiftly across the grass, around to the back door. There wasn't anything else there for her. There was nothing else she needed to hear. She's so tired. She wants to sleep. She's disgusting, she's in sore need of a shower and a change of clothes, but more than anything else in this horrible world, she wants to sleep.

No. That's not the thing she wants most.

She wants to go back to when she still believed it would be all right.

It shouldn't comfort her that someone else is asking all those questions, and making those suggestions, the ones the woman was forcing out between her lips. And it doesn’t, not really.

Except it kind of does.

~

She lets herself silently into the house, moves down the hall to the stars with as much of that silence as she can bring with her. She bypasses the kitchen, hears T-Dog and Patricia and Glenn still in there, still talking. Maggie is nowhere in either sightline or earshot, and that's perfectly fine. By the front door she stops long enough to slip off her boots and climbs the stairs with them in one hand, only needing half her attention to avoid the creakiest steps.

She knows without a shadow of a doubt that she's not equipped to deal with anyone. Tomorrow, if she can spare the motivation, she might feel embarrassed about that.

Down the hall; the door to the guest room is ajar, and through the crack she glimpses light, shifting figures: Daddy, Maggie. On the bed, a small shape under the blanket—pitifully small. The sound of raspy, labored breathing and quietly tense voices.

Scattered words. _…the meds…if they don't…too late…_

She moves on.

In her own room, she shuts the door with the same near silence with which she's been doing everything else, the faintest squeak of the doorknob and the hinge and the smallest click of the catch, and then she turns and leans against it, buries her face in her hands and tries merely to keep her feet. The bed is barely a yard away. It'll be all right to fall into that.

She can let go.

Her room. Back in Atlanta, she couldn't wait to return to this room. To the whole house of course, and to Mama and Daddy and Maggie and Shawn most of all, but especially to this room. Pale walls and dark wood, comfortable mix of age and her own new things. Someone turned on the lamp by her bed, and the whole room is thrown into a gauzy, warm glow. The bed itself, the old quilt at the foot with its pattern of delicate forget-me-nots. Her books, her calculus homework laid out on her desk by one of the large windows, the little vacation and holiday knickknacks scattered in their places on shelves and her dresser. A snow globe. A miniature Mt. Rushmore. A gracefully carved wooden horse, and a deer made of the same rich reddish wood. Makeup and perfume she hardly ever wears but was nevertheless excited to get, feeling so grown up for having it, like her first pair of high heels—although those were barely _high_ at all.

_I-am-sixteen-going-on-seventeen._

She was such a damn child.

She still wants to be in this room. Wants it so badly. But it's also nearly unbearable.

She drops her boots with a thump, finally heedless of the noise, and stumbles to the bed. She manages to get her jeans off and herself under the covers before unconsciousness takes her. Not sleep; this is far too sudden and far too heavy to be sleep. She feels like she's been drugged. Like she took too many of those pain pills and now she's staggering through the consequences.

To the extent that she can feel gratitude, she's endlessly grateful.

~

The noise outside is like a slap in the face, jolting her at once wide awake and half asleep, her eyes snapping open but her brain muddy and confused. She blinks, finds that she's staring up at the ceiling, the fan, the old crystal bulbs in its center. The lamp by the bed is still on, but it's not bright enough to wash out the lights sliding from the water stain in the corner to the edge of the windows.

What was the sound? She only knows that it was loud. Singular. Broken. Chaos.

An engine, and shouts.

_Get up._

She should. It’s the man, the one who came with the boy and his parents, and Otis. Back with what Daddy needs. She should get her ass up, get out of this room, find out what's going on. See if she can help, if there's anything she can do. She doesn't know the little boy, but he's a _little boy,_ and he's hurt, and whether or not he's better off out of this world isn't her choice to make. Outside this door, down there in the yard, it sounds like all hands on deck.

She doesn't get up. She doesn't move at all. She stays precisely where she is, her bare legs tangled in the sheets and her underwear uncomfortably twisted to one side and her right arm crooked beneath the pillow and almost completely numb. The impulse to get up and out is there, but it's distant. Academic. Like she's observing it applied to someone else rather than to herself.

Later she’ll remember this feeling, and she'll understand that it was a warning shot.

Or cracks, spidering their way through her foundation.

She recognizes most of the voices—Daddy, Maggie, Glenn, and even Rick and his wife—but not one other, which she assumes is the man. It's low, tight, and she can't make out a word of it, but something in it breaks through the strange veil that's settled around her and tugs.

And she knows. She doesn't _know,_ but she does, and after another moment, when she doesn't hear Otis’s voice, she knows for certain, and she closes her eyes and releases a long, rough breath.

It's like a slow-motion punch to the gut, when she's already been hit too many times to really feel it anymore.

Heavy footfalls clomping up the porch steps and the bang of the screen door, then more voices downstairs and the sound of hurrying. Feet on the stairs. Patricia—she's expecting Patricia to make some sound, to cry out, to sob, but there's nothing.

They might not even tell her. Something hot and bitter rises in her throat, like the harbinger of vomit. They could need her to help with the boy, so they might just keep it from her until she's not necessary anymore.

That's unfair. They're better than that, to think that way of her. They have to be. Even now, they have to be.

Doesn't matter.

The door down the hall opens, slams closed. Another jumbled chorus of voices on both sides of it, then one set dies down and the other is going away, back toward the stairs and down them. Someone is crying, and it's not Patricia. The boy’s mother, maybe. Probably. Behind her lids, Beth sees her leaning against Rick’s side, clinging to him and weeping into the crook of his neck, tears streaking his skin. She won't want to lose her son. Even if she genuinely does believe that he'd be better off dead in the long run, she won't want to lose him.

_But everyone is going to lose someone now._

There's a digital clock on her bedside table; the red glow of its numbers are visible to her without her having to turn her head. She opens her eyes and flicks her gaze to them.

_3:16_

She waits.

Time gradually melts, flows into odd forms like the shadows on the ceiling. She closes her eyes again; she doesn't think she sleeps but it's possible that she dozes, because when she checks the clock again it's nearly four. Finally some knot inside her slips loose and she sits up, her numb arm hanging uselessly at her side—it's beginning to wake up in tingling waves that ripple into her core, and she bends over it, clutching it against her chest and gritting her teeth until it subsides.

Outside it's still full dark. But it won't be for much longer.

She's not ready for the day.

She clumsily kicks her legs free and swings them over the side of the bed, somehow finds her feet and stumbles across the room to her dresser. She so badly needs to shower—her skin feels greasy and her hair like she's slept in several mouthfuls of gum—but she merely strips off the rest of her filthy clothes and rummages in the drawers for clean underwear and jeans, pulls a tee from the closet without bothering to look at which it is.

Not entirely certain why she's doing it at all, she plods barefoot to the door and opens it.

Outside, the hall is dim and quiet. The door of the room where they have the boy is closed, but as she steps out of her own room and makes her way toward it, she hears voices behind it—very soft, drained, but not crushed. She can't discern individual words, but these aren't the voices of people who have lost their child.

It must be all right, then.

Something dull and awful turns over in her mind. _Good for them._

She passes the door by and heads for the stairs. She's barely laid her hand on the worn wooden bannister knob when a wail rises to her, a miserable, wrenched sound with loss running through every millisecond of it like infected veins. It's a sound she knows. She's been hearing it in her own head for hours, feeling it vibrating silently across the inside of her ribs.

Patricia. They've told her.

She descends the stairs. From the direction of the kitchen come Patricia’s fractured moans, and Daddy’s voice interspersed between them, low. Beth stops when she is, one hand against the wall, the texture of the paper slightly rough beneath her fingers. She should be sad too. She should be _crying,_ for God’s sake. Otis was a good man, kind, always sweet to her. Known her since she was small. Used to give her rides on the tractor, let her pretend to drive it. He hung the old rope swing for her and Shawn in the ancient oak tree by the barn.

_The barn._

She isn't crying. She feels as numb as her arm.

“Beth.”

She doesn't jump, not exactly. She twitches and looks up. Maggie, standing in front of her with a pile of clothes in her arms. Beth flicks her gaze from the clothes to Maggie’s face and back again.

She recognizes those clothes. Big. Shirt, overalls. Worn and frayed. Work clothes.

"Otis is gone."

Beth nods. "I know."

Maggie’s face is like gray stone. Her voice, when she speaks, is the same. “Do me a favor and take these to Shane in the front hall. The man who went out with him.” She purses her lips. “He's a mess. Can't keep what he's got on now.”

Beth nods wordlessly, accepts them when they're held out to her. No point in refusing. Except as Maggie steps away from her, part of her drops the clothes at her feet and lunges across them and grips Maggie by the shirt and _shakes_ her, and in a voice she doesn't remotely recognize she screams _how could you how could you HOW COULD YOU DO IT_

She pushes past Maggie, hugging the soft fabric against herself, the smell of clean laundry filling her nose.

~

He's lingering near the door, shuffling from foot to foot, as if—like a big cat—he's not sure whether he wants to be out or in. A big _nervous_ cat, she thinks with a distant twinge of disquiet. His broad shoulders are hunched, his head down as he looks around in a way she could only describe as furtive. To anyone who gave him a passing glance, she guesses he would merely appear weary and shaken, and in fact perhaps that's all it is.

But as she gets closer, as she really studies him, she wonders.

He raises his head when she stops in front of him, and something snaps into focus behind his shadowed eyes, like he was wandering and only now is he completely present inside himself. He _is_ shaken, badly so.

What did he see out there with Otis? More of what she saw in Atlanta?

Something worse?

She proffers the clothes. “Here.” Then, as he hesitantly accepts them: “They were Otis’s.”

Once more that interior snap. This time it's not focus, however. It's different—the opposite of focus. Jarred, as if she's lightly sucker-punched him.

If he wasn't able to help Otis, if he had to see Otis die, or leave him behind, that makes sense. He might feel responsible. He might feel downright haunted, and now she's handed him clothing belonging to a freshly minted ghost who's even now hovering just over his shoulder.

Normally she might feel sorry for him. Now: _Well, Mister Shane, we've all got our crosses to bear._

“Thanks,” he mutters hoarsely. Clears his throat. “I. Yeah. Thanks.”

She nods in the direction of the stairs. “You can use the hallway bathroom upstairs. Clean towels’re in the closet opposite.” _Unless that's changed too._

He ducks his head and steps past her. She turns to watch his back as it recedes down the hall—still bunched, drawn in on himself. He's a big man, and powerfully built, but he doesn't look either big or powerful now.

Whatever he saw, it must have been horrible.

For a few moments she remains where she is. In the kitchen, Patricia is still sobbing quietly, but she sounds calmer. Exhausted brokenness. Perhaps in a bit she'll slip into numbness like a sleeping limb, join Beth in that state, and that'll be a temporary blessing.

Except maybe it won't be temporary. For Patricia, yes, but not for herself. Possibly this is just her life now. The nature of pain is such that, in the furthest depths of it, one can't imagine it ever ending, yet sooner or later you do rise out of it again. She knows this.

Except she's not so certain that she does. Because there's a lot she knew, and a lot she's spent the last few days being forced to reconsider.

 _Shit_.

She never used to swear like this. Not even to herself.

At some point she goes back upstairs and enters a bathroom still warm and steamy, presumably from Shane. She strips, cuts on the water, steps under the spray, sits down in the tub and pulls her knees against her chest and breathes.

Remembering Mama giving her baths in this tub, when she was little. She was resistant to baths; Mama coaxed her in with a kind of bubblebath that turned the suds all different colors—red and blue and green and yellow. She mixed the colors and created new ones. Tried but never truly succeeded in making a rainbow.

Regardless, she didn't have to be coaxed too much after that. Sitting in the water, placing a carefully formed ball of purple suds on top of Mama’s head and watching her laugh in spite of herself.

She doesn't cry. She simply breathes. After a while—the water doesn't turn cold but it's edging in that direction—she gets up and turns off the tap, climbs out and fumbles for her towel.

She's leaning over the sink and brushing her teeth when she notices it. A curious thing.

There's hair scattered around the sink. Not a huge amount of it, but it's there. Short, dark, slightly curved strands. On an impulse, toothbrush still in her mouth, she bends over to examine the contents of the little trash can by the toilet.

Not a small amount of hair in there. A lot. Hell of a lot. She stares at it for a few seconds, blankly bemused.

Why in God’s name would Shane have been _cutting his hair?_

Doesn't matter. She doesn't need to know, and she honestly can't summon the energy to wonder too hard. She finishes, gathers up her clothes and slouches down the hall wrapped in her towel, heading for the relative sanctuary of her bedroom and shutting the door firmly behind her.

She tosses the clothes onto a chair, and—naked and with her hair damp and full of tangles—tumbles back into bed and drags the covers up over herself.

It's beginning to brighten outside. She watches the pale pink light swell until her eyelids are too heavy to watch anything at all, and she sinks into the darkness beneath her.

But before the last of it closes over her head, suddenly there's the matter of Daryl. How she was disappointed that he didn't come with her. How she was slightly hurt that he chose to stay behind.

How part of her was worried that that was it. She wasn't going to see him again at all.

She's pretty confident that she will. But she's not confident how much of a good thing that'll be. And she's not confident that this nightmare would have been any better if he had accompanied her tonight.

Likely the opposite.

She's not even confident that she wants him to come here now. Because if he does come… What does she do? What does she _say?_ She doesn't owe these strangers anything, no kind of truth or honesty regarding what's penned up barely fifty yards from the house… but Daryl is another story.

Daryl is another story altogether.

 _Shit,_ she thinks again. And then she thinks nothing.

 


	13. there is a lie that drags us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rest of the group arrives at the farm, a memorial service is held, and plans to find Sophia are made. As for Beth and Daryl, neither of them knows where they fit anymore, and neither of them is happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I've said this before and we've been at this pace for a while, but thanks to you all for your patience with the fact that I'm posting at a much slower pace than I used to. I'm now within sight of finishing my doctoral dissertation, plus I've also recently started writing a novel that I'm super excited about, so my writing life is pretty busy at the moment, but I'm working in fic wherever I can. 
> 
> I should say, though, that tomorrow I'm heading to my parents' house in southeastern PA for a week, which I plan to make a great big writing retreat of sorts. I'll Be Yours For a Song was in fact conceived - so to speak - in their hot tub, three years ago this past Sunday. So I have a history of producing good stuff there. Hopefully I'll be able to post more stuff for y'all, whether it's this or something else.
> 
> As usual, your support and encouragement is so extremely much appreciated. ❤️

Somehow, knowing her to the extent that he does, it's exactly the kind of farm he would have expected.

There's an unreal quality to it, watching it approach from the bike as it roars through the otherwise quiet morning. There's a kind of dreamy gauziness in how the light falls across the fields, breeze passing over them in golden ripples. The same breeze sets the windmill by the wooden fence into a lazy spin, and he finds his attention briefly caught and held by that fence, hazarding a longer look to the side and tracking its rich brown blur. It's clearly old, slats worn down by season after season’s worth of elements, posts standing at a slant. It's a generational fence, put in by someone’s grandfather, maybe originally someone’s great-grandfather, and as he swings his eyes back to the road he feels a twinge beneath his diaphragm that he doesn't entirely understand.

Isn't entirely sure he wants to devote much thought to it.

Now a scatter of grazing cows, speckled white and brown, and beyond them the house comes into full view—large, stately in a way he can only think of as oddly unpretentious, and possibly contemporary with the fence. Surrounded by oaks casting wide patches of shade. White. Generous porch. He can tell without having to get any closer that it has rocking chairs on it, probably a swing, and they'll be old too.

He never did picture her farm, not with any specificity, and she never offered any real description. But this picture matches that mental one he never made.

She rides horses, he thinks suddenly. She rides horses all the time, on mornings like this one, and when she does her hair streams out behind her.

He shakes himself, glances back at the RV bringing up the rear, and he reaches for a little more speed.

Just because.

~

She looks up, the stone forgotten in her hand. Everything forgotten. All other sensory input is lost in the overwhelming expansion of what she sees and hears. What she sees: the white hulk of the approaching RV, as it turns off the road. What she hears: the growl of the bike, a vibration her muscles remember in the way—until now—that she's remembered the back of a horse.

Another sight: flash of chrome in the rising sun.

She stands there and watches them come, unsure of what she's feeling. That's nothing new; when she woke up a couple of hours ago she wasn't sure what she was feeling then, either. Patricia was still weeping downstairs, and she lay in bed and listened to that for a while, until a weary and mostly aimless forward impulse seeped into her muscles and she got up.

In silence, she ate some toast; it tasted like ashes.

Now she's gathering rocks with the others, and as her attention partially separates itself from the tiny convoy, she sees that Maggie and Glenn have stopped as well. She can sense what each of them is feeling—the uneasy tension in Maggie, the relief in Glenn. She is, she supposes, somewhere in the middle, because she has no idea what happens next, but she suspects it'll be closer to the _not good_ end of the spectrum than the other.

She still has no idea what she will or won't say. She supposes she'll find out when the time comes.

Pushing herself back into motion, she drops the rock into the wheelbarrow with the others and goes to greet their guests.

~

Her father is older than he expected.

Otherwise, like the farm, it all fits. There's a way about him, a quiet authority that Daryl hasn't seen much of in all his thirty-six years; stands to reason that he wouldn't be less refined in his manner, because the prospect of Beth Greene having been raised by a rough man never seemed likely.

But none of this is reassuring. He stands a little way behind and apart from the rest of the group, hand curled around the strap of his bow, and wishes he was even less visible than he is.

He doesn't belong here. It smacked him in the face the second he pulled the bike to a stop, and it's only been smacking him harder every second since then, making something deep in his lower core feel tired and vaguely bruised. That house. This man, his family—older brunette standing between her father and Beth, pretty too though the resemblance isn't especially noticeable—and the overall profound air of aged _grace_ resting in the whole place.

Should've stayed out in the fucking woods. Maybe tossed out the excuse of continuing the search. It would have had the benefit of being true.

The man dips his chin slightly. “I'm Hershel Greene. This is my farm.”

Simple. Also incredibly obvious, but this is not about stating facts. Daryl doesn't miss the subtle weight behind the words, and it doesn't take much to translate.

 _This is_ my _farm. My land. I don't know you, and I don't trust you, so watch your step._

He can respect that. Wasn't exactly anticipating a red carpet rollout anyway.

But as Dale steps forward to introduce them, his gaze flicks from Hershel to the older girl— _Maggie_ , right, her name is Maggie—and then to Beth. And he doesn't precisely mean for that to happen, because as uncomfortable as this whole situation is making him, he only now realizes that he didn't understand how it would feel, seeing her on her home turf, the world she was always going back to, and this after he thought he was probably saying goodbye. In Atlanta they were in the same boat, and how goddamn different she is from him in every way didn't much matter. Now it's all changed.

Except that's not what it's like. That's not what he sees. Her eyes land on his and instantly fresh tightness snaps into his shoulders, because this girl doesn't look any easier here than he must. It's all over her, her body screaming it—what she wants to do is a mystery to him, but whatever it is, it's just about vibrating through her goddamn _skin._

Her eyes. He doesn't know how to begin to define what's going on in those eyes.

Except that it's bad.

Something has happened.

An instant of breakage between them, yet another thing he can't articulate, and his gaze leaves her and of its own accord switches back to Hershel, who is now saying something about a man of his who went on a run for the boy and didn't make it back. Hershel’s voice is quavering, though almost imperceptibly, and clearly whatever went down there has been hard on him, but—and this is only more confirmation of Daryl’s essential assholishness as far as he's concerned—he can't seem to focus on it. Sucked, yeah, of course, but just as he was very directly looking at Beth, now he's _not_ looking at her with equal directness.

He's used to shit going wrong. He's not nearly as used to not understanding what that shit is or how it's fallen into that category.

She's still staring at him. He can feel it. Fights down the urge to snap at her, run over whatever Hershel is saying and tell her to cut it the fuck out. That might be a tad bit hard to explain.

What has she told Hershel? How much does Hershel know?

How much _will_ he want explained?

Others are joining them. Slim woman with long brown hair and exhausted eyes. Pale and equally exhausted looking man close beside her, slightly bow-legged—and a fucking cop uniform, ridiculous Smokey Bear hat, and Daryl’s jaw briefly clenches so hard it hurts. Pure training rather than rational response, like a dog drooling at the sound of a bell; the world has ended and one meager side benefit of that is that cops are no longer a phenomenon, and this prick wouldn't be in any position to haul him in for anything even if he had done anything worth the hauling.

Ruin the practically impossible no-jail streak he's somehow had going his entire life. Not going to happen. Never again a worry.

Still. Fucking cop.

_Just leave. Yes, it would be very weird to turn around apropos of nothing whatsoever, get on the bike and speed away and never be seen again. In no way does that matter. You don't owe these people the illusion of normality._

_They think you're weird already. Damage fucking done._

Oh, but speaking of _weird,_ here's one last newcomer: powerfully built man in a shirt and overalls dramatically too big for him, freshly shaved head, and a look on his face like he wouldn't say no to jumping on a bike and never being seen again, either.

He's furtive, shoulders hunched. Eyes up and down and up again, scanning all of them. Not actually twitchy, but only through tremendous effort.

Huh.

And then Daryl is saved from any further internal wrestling by, of all things, a funeral.

~

Not a funeral proper. No body. Knowing what he now knows, this is unsurprising. He supposes that these days being able to bury a body is something of a luxury. Has to be extra tough on the widow, though she appears to be holding herself together remarkably well, all things considered.

He can sympathize.

Merle is unquestionably alive, so it wouldn't matter anyway, but he can still sympathize.

They all gather beneath one of the spreading oaks, warm breeze whispering through the leaves. Hershel reads from a battered Bible, words that melt into a drone Daryl barely attends to. One by one, people step forward, take a stone, place it on the top of the small cairn they've constructed. He watches them, still a little apart—tensing back up as he realizes what he's going to have to do or not do, but when the turn comes around to him, he tosses his body into autopilot and hangs back in his own head while his legs and hands take care of the job. It's been a useful skill before and it's useful now—paying awkward respects to a man he never met and so never got a chance to respect at all.

But it's not as though it's that much of a trial.

Beth is last. Against his better judgment he finds himself watching her again, the slope of her shoulders beneath her crisp white top as she moves—close to a stoop, as if she's carrying something heavy there in addition to what's in her hands. She doesn't look up at him as she passes. Doesn't look up at anyone. Reassumes her place next to Maggie, her hands folded in front of her and her head bowed.

Could be she's just broken up. She knew Otis, and it seems like she might have known him for a long time. It would make sense.

 _C’mon, man._ Merle, murmuring dryly in his ear, and he almost jumps. _Don't be a dumbass. I taught you better’n that. You know that's not all it is._

_You just met the girl, but you already know her well enough to see it._

His attention fades back in as the man Shane—who has naturally turned out to be a cop as well—is beginning to speak. Shane is telling a story, halting and ragged, and it's a good story. It's a comforting story. It's a _heroic_ story, a tale of bravery and sacrifice, and as he tells it, the soft weeping of the widow eases and unwinds and as she leans against Maggie’s side, it softens enough to rise into the branches of the oak, taken up by the breeze and carried away.

As a story it is, in other words, absolutely what everyone was hoping to hear.

Isn't that fortunate.

He watches Shane, eyes narrowing, the world seeming to sharpen into hard lines and acute angles. When he's tracking it's like this—not when he's looking for spoor, when he's opening wide and allowing the world to melt together and flow into all the spaces he makes for it, straining it through himself like sea water through baleen. It snaps into intense definition when he's found it and he can't let it go. A secondary set of jaws clamps down on it and reels it in, tauter and tauter until the bolt springs free.

_He's lyin’, little brother. Dunno what about, dunno what reason he would have to do it, but he is lyin’ through his ass, and he is not easy with it. It's eatin’ at him. Chewin’ him up like a junkyard pit got its teeth in him._

_Shit, he ain't even hidin’ it that well. If none of ‘em are seein’ it? It's ‘cause they don't wanna._

_And that, brother… Well, that might be a lil’ old problem. Bad liar can only keep up a lie for so long, and truth gone rancid ain't pretty when it all spills out._

He shakes himself, turns away. Fuck if he knows what to do next, but he didn't get this far by not being able to think on his feet, so.

Though he doesn't relish it being put to any manner of test, because he blinks and there's Beth standing in front of him, looking up at him with those strange, awful eyes. The rest of her is barely recognizable; he saw it before, but close up and in full sunlight, he perceives it with a clarity he didn't until now. She's washed off the blood and grime, gotten herself clean-clothed, her hair brushed and tied back and shining in a way he's never seen it do. If it weren't for her eyes, she would look positively normal. As if nothing ever happened. As if it's just another nice day on her nice farm.

It's nothing of the kind.

Anyway, he now feels like three times the dirty mess he did before. Which shouldn't concern him one iota, but here we are.

“Hi.”

He grunts. Gives her the tiniest up-nod. Trusts that's adequate.

She digs the toe of one boot into the grass. Her hands are hanging loose at her sides—but not that loose. They're not fists, but they're considering making the transition. “You didn't find any sign of her? The little girl?”

He nearly releases a sigh of relief. Not only is this a simple topic, but it's a safely neutral one as well, though he's pretty sure she already knows the answer. Would have heard it from someone before they all went to the cairn.

He shakes his head.

“They're gonna keep lookin’?”

“Yeah.” He glances past her at an open stretch of ground under another cluster of trees closer to the house, where the RV is parked and a camp setup of sorts appears to be in progress. “Heard they're gonna get together over there in a while, do some plannin’.”

“Are you gonna go help?”

He shrugs. Yes. Yes, he most likely is. Doesn't want to, is in fact inwardly cringing at the thought, but he's in this deep, and if he hasn't set in motion the getting-on-the-bike-and-never-being-seen-again plan by now, it should probably be filed away for the moment.

Filing it away doesn't mean eliminating it as an option.

“Alright,” she says, hesitates, then repeats it, more firmly this time. “Alright. Good,”

What precisely is _good_ about that, she doesn't specify, but as he's starting to cast about for some route out of this exchange, an expression passes across her face that halts him. Words, actual words rattling around in her head; he can almost literally _see_ them, and her desperately sorting through them, attempting to put them into some kind of order and scraping together the will to say them.

She wants to tell him something.

There's something to tell.

But then she's giving him a minute shake of the head—not _him,_ really, not him at all, and backing up a step, obviously preparing to retreat. “So… I guess I'll see you, then.” She pauses, points toward the house. “Daddy wanted to talk to you a sec.”

Oh.

Oh, great. _Fucking terrific._ His stomach is packing up to make the trip down to his shoes as he nods again. And she's gone, left him with startling quickness, walking swiftly across the yard and heading for some destination best known to herself. Hershel, Daryl now sees, is standing by the porch steps, his Bible still in one hand, and once more looking authoritative.

This is, in every way, shape, and form, the conversation he wanted under no circumstances to have.

So he sucks it up, and he goes to have it.

~

His interactions with people like Hershel have been minimal. There's never been a reason for them to be more than that. There's probably a script for this, a particular way he's supposed to be acting and talking, a specific thing he's supposed to be doing with his face and his hands, but he hasn't the first clue what any of those are, so he merely plants his feet in the dust and looks at the man, hand on his bow strap, and waits to see how this goes.

Attempts to remind himself, also, that he has no dog in this fight. He has no reason to care what some farmer with snow on the mountaintop thinks of him. If all goes well he won't be here much longer anyway.

But the farmer in question is looking him over with eyes as keen as new bolts and otherwise totally unreadable. Daryl doesn't squirm. The sun on his bare arms and the back of his neck suddenly feels much too warm.

Finally—shit, _mercifully_ —Hershel speaks. “My daughter informs me you helped her in Atlanta. Brought her home. Or near to it.”

It remains impossible to determine what he does or doesn't think of this whole business. Daryl grunts, and figures spare, detached honesty is almost certainly the best policy.

“Found her locked up in a hospital. Wasn't gonna leave no kid behind in there.”

Hershel nods, perhaps satisfied by this answer. “She vouches for you. Says you're a good man.” He pauses, and for a fraction of a second his focus shifts past Daryl and to where they're setting up their little camp. His mouth pulls into a thin line. “Rick’s people… As soon as his son is healed up enough and they've located their little girl, they'll be on their way. But my family owes you a debt of gratitude. If you're willing to follow the rules of this house, do your part and do right by us, you're welcome to stay as long as you like.”

That word. _Welcome._ Somewhat surprisingly, there’s no distaste here, no disdain. Hershel means what he's saying, and yes, it's only been a few minutes, but Daryl is already reasonably sure that this man rarely says anything he doesn't fully mean. Yet there's no warmth in it either. He says _welcome,_ but he's not exactly throwing his arms wide in a heartfelt embrace. He's qualifying the offer.

He's most definitely ready to change his mind.

Also, _as long as you like_ might not be so permissive. Under the words, Daryl thinks he detects the pointed jingling of car keys.

Again, he grunts. “I'm stayin’ till we find the girl. After that…” He shrugs.

“You can sleep in the house, if you'd prefer. We have the room.” Hershel’s brows draw together. “I'm not sure how the rest of them would take it, but that's really their worry.”

Again, he's not receiving the image of crisp linens or a mint on the pillow. As before, Hershel is offering in good faith, but he also wouldn't complain should the offer be turned down. And in truth, Daryl is looking at the front door of that big white house, the old family pictures and beautiful antique furniture and heirloom china that must be inside, and he's thinking _no fucking way._

Even if Hershel was begging him, no fucking way.

“‘m fine beddin’ down out here.” He pauses. “Thanks, though.”

Hershel inclines his head. “I'll go, then. I should look in on the boy.”

Daryl watches him climb the creaking porch steps, watches the screen door swing as his back recedes into the hall, listens to the rattling _clack_ as the door falls shut again. And stays for a moment or two longer, both everything and nothing rolling through the rock tumbler that is his skull.

That went both far better and oddly worse than he suspected it would.

~

She isn't invited to the council they're holding around the truck. She goes anyway, arrives after everyone else and takes a place between and a little behind Andrea and Maggie, surveying the topographic map they've spread out. Rick is leaning intently over it, his long fingers moving across the lines of river and road, and his voice low and of equal intensity.

“Alright. Tomorrow, then. We’ll start doing this right.”

Shane raises his head, scans the circle. “That means we can't have our people out there with just knives. They need the gun trainin’ we've been promising them.”

“I'd prefer you not carrying guns on my property.”

As one their eyes turn to Daddy. Daddy, using the voice that says—in the calmest, most amiable way in the entire world—that he is under no circumstances prepared to debate the matter.

Something cold and terrible is coiling through her, moving like a wave from the base of her spine through her muscles. It might be a twilight-dim cousin of anger, or it might be something entirely other. Daddy doesn't _get it_. She already knew that Daddy didn't get it, and hour by hour additional evidence is piling up.

And she really does not know how much more she can take.

He continues, arms folded. “We’ve managed so far without turning this into an armed camp.”

Shane straightens, frowning. She doesn't blame him for arguing. He doesn't know the voice. “All due respect, you get a crowd of those things wanderin’ in here—”

“Look, we’re guests here.” Rick, trying to strike a balance between firm and placating. Judging by the look on Shane’s face, it isn't altogether working. He turns to Hershel. “This is your property, and we will respect—”

“He's right.”

At first she doesn't realize that she's the one who's spoken. It could be Maggie; Maggie doesn't appear to get it either, but if someone here is at all likely to revise their thinking, it's her. Or maybe Andrea; makes sense that she'd dispute a stance that suicidally foolish. But no. Maggie is staring at her. Andrea is staring at her. They're all staring at her, in surprise and—in Maggie’s case—consternation, and that's when she knows and that cold thing in her laces into frost along her skin. Despite the growing heat of the day, she fights back a shiver.

Daryl. From his place farthest across the hood of the truck, Daryl is looking at her too.

He doesn't look nearly as surprised. Apart from that, she can't read him.

“He's right,” she repeats. Hell, might as well dig her grave a little deeper. She hasn't yet met Daddy’s eyes, but she knows what she’ll see when she does. “About the guns. You should all have ‘em, you'll need ‘em.”

_Sooner or later, you'll all need them. You’ll need every goddamn bullet you have._

“Bethy,” Daddy says softly, warningly, and she nearly whirls on him, shouting at the top of her lungs. _Don’t you dare call me that._

_Don't you dare try to shut me up._

Instead she keeps on digging. “Just ‘cause we haven't seen that many out this way, doesn't mean they won't come. Even one or two, gettin’ too close before you know it—”

“ _Beth._ ”

He hasn't graduated to _Bethany._ The trouble she's in is not yet catastrophic. Though if he gets as far as _Bethany Ann_ she’s well and truly in for it.

So maybe it's pure ingrained childhood instinct that stops her. Maybe it's the part of her that still has sense, that still _cares._ Maybe she's just a damn coward. Either way, she falls silent, and finally she's looking at him, holding his gaze—and she can't be that much of a coward, because she's not wavering. She's not afraid.

She really doesn't give a shit.

“Go feed the chickens.” Still soft. Carefully even. “We’ll talk about this later.”

Face burning in spite of the ice that's taken her, she turns on her heel and goes. Before she does, she catches Maggie’s eye, and what she sees there…

It might be sympathy.

~

She catches Daryl striding away from the camp ten minutes later, bow over his shoulder, and she steps neatly into his path. He had to have seen her long before now, but he starts when she does, blinks at her. She's holding the battered plastic handle of the feed pail with both hands, and she's glad of that, because it keeps them from shaking.

Gives her something to brace against, because she's thawing rapidly, and the rage pumping through her is hot and brilliant. She feels like it might be glowing through her very pores.

“Why the hell didn't you say somethin’ back there?”

He blinks again. He appears confused. She's not buying it for one single minute. “Huh?”

“About what I said. The guns.” Although she can't see anyone in earshot, she drops her voice, hissing between her teeth. “You _know_ it's right, you _know_ we need ‘em. Why the hell didn't you back me up?”

For a moment or two he regards her in silence. The pail seems heavier in her grip, rubbing uncomfortably against callouses on her palms that should have prevented discomfort. She hadn't wanted to do this. She hadn't wanted to say anything to him. But apparently she should get used to the idea that her mouth and body are no longer under her own conscious control.

“He's your dad,” he says at last. He says it simply, like a verbal shrug. _What did you expect me to do?_ “I ain't goin’ against what he says. Not on his own damn land.” He steps past her, shooting her one last glance as he does. “Anyhow, girl, I don't owe you a fuckin’ thing.”

She turns to watch him leave, making his way toward the east pasture. Then, with more composure than she would have believed herself capable of, she walks to the coop and feeds the chickens.

~

“Bethy.”

She's just closing up the pail when she hears him. Briefly she goes utterly and completely still, crouching with her fingers motionless on the handle. It did indeed somehow hurt her palms, and they're stinging with sweat, the weirdly sweet odor of old chicken shit and fresh straw filling her sinuses. She breathes it in, listens to the meditative clucking of the hens and the dry rustle of their feathers.

There are three fewer than there were. No one has explained it to her, but she knows precisely where they went.

She sighs. She supposes she's still angry, but once more the marrow-deep weariness has swept in and covered it over, like snow on coals. “What, Daddy.”

 Not a question.

“We should talk. About what happened.”

He doesn't only mean what she said. Her teeth close on her lower lip and her nails dig into her palms, flaring the sting. It would be better, she decided some time ago, not to talk to him about any of it. It would be better to leave it alone. She can't imagine what could possibly come of it that would be remotely good, that would get any of them remotely anywhere except somewhere worse.

And she'd rather not find out what _worse_ would mean.

“I don't have anythin’ else to say.”

“Beth, please look at me.”

She releases the handle, rises, obeys. She's standing in the coop doorway; despite the ample screens, the air in here is heavier, warmer, and when the breeze touches her face it's shockingly cool. She can't seem to control her own temperature anymore, she thinks. There's no comfortable middle range. She's freezing or she's boiling, and surely at some point she'll simply evaporate and blow away like steam.

Or she’ll crack right down the middle.

“We don't _know_ them,” he says, with infuriating patience. Infuriating reasonableness. “They seem decent enough, true, but I don't want them wandering around this place with guns. It's asking for all manner of trouble. You have to understand that.”

“Otis had his rifle.”

His face tightens. “That's different.”

“ _You didn't see them._ ”

All at once she's dangerously close to yelling, her voice high and strained, and quivering in a way she doesn't at all like. She sounds hysterical, like some crazy girl who just needs someone to calm her down and talk some sense into her, talk _down_ to her, and she tackles her own voice and wrestles it back. Chokes it.

“Bethy—”

“You didn't see them.” She takes a step forward, her hands locked into fists at her side. What she intends to do with them, what she intends to do with any of herself, she has no idea. “In the city. You didn't see what they were really like. I did. There are _so many of them,_ so many out there, and they _will_ come here. More than one or two. A lot more.” She tries to swallow; she has nothing to swallow with. “It’s just a matter of time.”

“You shouldn't say,” he says quietly, “that I don't know what they're like.”

For a long moment they gaze at each other, wordless. Motionless. Daddy has always felt so much taller than her—not _been_ taller, though he is, but _felt_ taller, and that's never made her feel anything but safe. Daddy isn't just smarter than everyone, Daddy is _stronger_ than everyone, too, and Daddy will never let anything hurt her.

Daddy knows what can hurt her, and he’ll know to stop it when it comes.

There is a moment, she now understands, when you realize that your parents are only human. And that moment hurts in a way nothing else ever can.

They can die. And—perhaps even worse—they can be wrong. 

“You don't, though.” All the anger has left her. All that remains in its place is sadness like winter lead. “You don't know at all. I know you don't know, because you haven't put a bullet in every single one of their heads.”

She doesn't give him a chance to answer. She leaves the pail where it is and pushes past him, and she feels him rock slightly on his feet when her shoulder collides with his side. It pierces her. He can be moved. He can be shaken. He can be knocked to the ground.

He's weak.

“I'm gonna lie down.”

He lets her go.


	14. the early bird, he knows his place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl searches the woods for Sophia. He finds some things he didn't expect - not what he wanted to find, but potentially worth something nonetheless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I'm drawing an entire 5k word chapter from maybe three or four scenes in an entire episode, which continues to both amuse me and fill me with despair. But when I went back and rewatched the episode these scenes are from - "Cherokee Rose" - I was struck all over again by how wonderful they are (with the sequence of Daryl in the house being almost entirely dialogue-free) and also by the subtly different notes they possess when approached from the angle I'm using. 
> 
> Like, Daryl doesn't have the fraught history with Rick; this is his first time speaking directly to the guy at all, and his lingering resentment over Merle is replaced by pure suspicion. By the same token, his search for Sophia is profoundly affected by his relationship with Beth, and even moreso what he does when he finds the rose and decides to give it to Carol. This stuff is exactly why I wanted to write this in the first place; not even the ship itself so much as the chance to reveal entirely new takes on familiar scenes and plot points, to explore all these relationships with very different roots and starting points. 
> 
> It's also bringing it freshly home to me how crucial s1 is for Daryl as a character. s2 is where his development really takes off, but none of that happens the way it does without the foundational work done with TF in s1. In this story, none of that is there, and some small but important and fascinating alternate orderings are emerging in him as a result, at least from my perspective as the writer. 
> 
> I'm having a lot of fun with this, is what I'm saying. I hope you're having fun too. I'm really excited for some of what's coming. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, and letting me know what you're thinking about all this as we go. ❤️

He thinks he might be far enough from the house and the camp to avoid being accosted, which is of course when the fucking cop flags him down.

“Hey. Daryl.”

He stops in his tracks. Doesn't turn around; instead he rolls his eyes at himself, because why exactly did he stop at all? Asshole doesn't have a patrol car, isn't flashing lights and blaring sirens. He's just calling for Daryl’s attention, and seconds later the cop— _Rick_ —follows it up with something that sounds a good bit less authoritative. It startles him a little. Which it probably shouldn't, but there's so much happening right now that he's never had cause to get used to.

“You got a minute?”

He supposes he does. It’s not yet noon; he's got daylight to spare. He faces Rick, gives him a single bob of the head. Keeps the rest of his affect carefully neutral. In truth, regardless of how his brain is choosing its referential terms, Rick doesn't seem like much of an asshole. What he seems is _tired,_ and if what Hershel said about the amount of blood he's given is accurate, it's no wonder.

Rick is walking closer, long strides in spite of his obvious weariness, and Daryl takes a moment to study him as he approaches. He took the opportunity to make an initial evaluation during the meeting around the map, but he had been in the midst of evaluating a number of other things, and while he can multitask just fine…

And then there was the whole thing with Beth. Which he's still not sure what to make of.

Except that, as with many things to do with Beth at present, he doesn't like it.

So now he studies Rick. His square stance, maintained even as he moves, the slender power in his frame—not as in-your-face muscular as Shane, but respectable. Could hold his own just fine in a fight; if he's spent his career to date sitting in his cruiser and munching donuts, it doesn't show. Strong jaw, strong features. He's squinting in the sun, even under the brim of his hat, and those eyes, when he halts in front of Daryl, are keen and clear.

Daryl is not sure that he likes this man. But he does at least sense that with him, one gets what one sees.

As opposed to his friend in the other uniform.

Rick rests a hand on his hip. Daryl’s gaze flicks down to it; there's no gun there, not at the moment, but the way his hand is arranged, he's clearly used to one being there to rest on. “Just figured we haven't had much of a chance to speak, could take one now.”

Daryl grunts. _Sure._

“Dale said you met ‘em out on the highway in the jam. With Beth, right?”

Another grunt. The safest Rule of Engagement continues to be saying a firmly limited amount, as accurately as he can. “Was gettin’ her home.”

“That’s good of you. And you’re helping us find Sophia.” Rick nods. “Just wanted to say I appreciate that.”

Daryl glances over his shoulder toward the treeline. It's inviting. No awkward conversations there, no weird deals, no people lying their asses off for unknown and unsettling reasons. Just the trees, the dappled sun, cool shadow, the soft rustling and echoing calls of birds, and—if he's careful and fortunate—a trail. Simplicity itself—and that's what Rick obviously doesn't intuit and what Daryl wouldn't bother to even attempt to explain: this is not charity. This is pure self-interest, at least for now. This is precisely what he wants to be doing, and if he wanted to do something else, he would be doing that instead. What he told Beth was nothing more or less than the truth; he doesn't owe her shit, doesn't owe _anyone_ shit, except the brother he gave up on. Which he's trying to think about as little as possible.

He looks back at Rick and rolls a shoulder. “Ain't gonna just sit around with my thumb up my ass.”

“You okay on your own?”

His eyes narrow. This is angling toward—fucking _again_ —awkward. For Christ’s sweet sake, it would be so nice if people could stop feigning _concern_ about him, like it'll make anything better somehow. “I'm better on my own. I'll be back before dark.”

He starts to turn, hitching his bow higher on his shoulder, and of course Rick isn't going to make this simple, and of course Daryl’s not resisting. Not the way he could be.

“Hey.” Pause as Daryl turns back, jaw working. “You know we got a base. We can get this search organized properly now. I'll be back at it tomorrow, we've got the manpower.”

What the fuck; there is very little point in hiding his exasperation any longer, so he stops doing so and takes a step forward, feeling a scowl pulling his features in on themselves. Something else he's finding it difficult to take with these people—something he wasn't actually dealing with on Beth’s part by the time they left the city, to her great credit—is how they talk _around_ shit, how exchanges seem to take at least twice as long as they need to. Maybe if everyone was less concerned with how people feel.

“You got a point, or are we just chattin’?”

“My point,” Rick says in that low, quiet drawl, “is it lets you off the hook, if you wanna be let. You don't owe us anything.”

Daryl snorts—near a laugh, if not quite there. So the guy does get it. He doesn't get what it _means,_ doesn't get that anything after that fact is none of his fucking business, but he gets the first part. Better, in fact, than Beth appears to.

And Beth is why he's here at all.

“Yeah, well.” He turns back toward the trees—for good this time, no matter what else in the way of pointless yammering Rick wants to do; he can chew cud with the goddamn cows if he feels that degree of need to flap his jaws—and starts walking. “My other plans fell through.”

Rick apparently has nothing else to say.

As he makes his way through the taller grass toward the trees, the warm smell of loose soil and the stronger and yet mellower odor of cow dung wafting to him on the rising breeze, all he can see with every interval closing of his lids is Beth’s face. Flushed and furious—and more than that. Desperate. Scared. He's seen that look in the eyes of cornered animals, not yet wounded, or not badly enough to be weakening, but sensing with increasing certainty that there's no way out for them, and that sooner or later the shot is going to strike home and end the hunt. They look at him and they see it coming, and every time he's made a kill that way, part of him has hated it. Because it's not fair. Because this ugly fucking world is brutal enough.

For a fraction of a second, that's how she looked. That was the depth of it. She's not merely sad about losing someone she knows, and she's not merely mad at her daddy, and she's not merely mad at _him_ for not standing with her.

Whatever it is, it's eating her alive.

 _Ain't your problem, brother. Ain't your circus, ain't your monkey shit to clean up. If she looks that bad, you trust ol’ Merle: you do_ not _wanna get whatever it is all over your shoes, ‘cause odds are you ain't never gonna get rid of the stink._

_You screwed up bad enough just takin’ her with you. Don't get in any deeper than you already are. These people? They might be alright for a day or two. That girl, though?_

_Christ, she ain't nothin’ but a pretty little package of big bad trouble._

He wouldn't dispute that. On the merits, he literally couldn't. But he's still seeing her as he leaves the grassy field behind and detours around a pile of dry brambles, distractedly kicking away the thorns that snag the already torn cuffs of his pants. Staring at him the way she did, her anger briefly superseding the haunted pain beneath. Accusing him.

Disappointed in him.

_I don't owe you shit._

He gives the last of the thorns a particularly vicious kick—goes out of his way to do it, in fact, and a chipmunk rockets out in a panic and skitters toward the safety of a group of thicker shrubs. He watches it go, biting at his lip.

 _Maybe,_ observes a softer voice, one that doesn't resemble Merle in the slightest, _it's not about what you owe anyone. Maybe it's not about that at all. You ever think about that? You ever entertain the possibility?_

_Just saying._

Gritting his teeth, he stalks into the safety of the trees.

~

And it does feel safe. Might just be by virtue of comparison—first the city, then the road, and then whatever the fuck he wants to consider the farm, none of which have felt free of hazards—but regardless, it does. The shade lays itself across him, gently broken with sunlight, and clouds of gnats hum and whine through wider patches of it. Once it gets to the thicker heat of afternoon, they'll be a nuisance, but for the moment, with the light catching their wings and the shell of their bodies, they're almost pretty.

Eyes down. But also ahead, all around, taking in everything and combing through. It's a return to something he knows well enough to do it semi-conscious, like the most pleasant kind of somnambulism, and the worry surrounding the girl aside, it's comfortable. One of the few comforts that's ever been available to him. At first awful, driven into it, beaten like a dog when he messed up, but later, when he discovered that he could do it better than the monster teaching him, going out alone and losing himself in it. In the city it felt wrong, and even if he did pick up a trail, he felt no confidence. But now, even with no trail as yet…

Not even the sound of walkers to break up the peace. They must be out there, but to the extent that he can do so without genuine danger, he's able to let the thought of them slip.

The girl. Little girl. That's not as pleasant a thought but he does have to go there, putting himself with her and finding the rhythm of her fear as he walks. He can't see her face but he can make out her form in the shimmering lens of his imagination, her slender arms pumping and legs scrambling in the leaves as she kept her head low and ran.

Despite what he said to Andrea last night, she's not like he was. No way, with a mother like Carol. Not too much of a jump to guess what probably happened to her father, and who knows what _he_ was like, but Carol cares.

Carol wouldn't have let her girl get lost in the woods for days. Not before the world fell apart and such things became impossible to avoid.

So Sophia doesn't know like he did. But she’ll have the same instincts, and hopefully the sense to heed them. Keep moving until you find a place to hide, curl into it, stay quiet. Wait to move on. What she technically should have done is stick close to the road and her people, but he doesn't blame her for not doing that; she’ll have kept going away from the danger, no matter where the danger was centered.

And when she was able to put her head up, she no longer knew the way back. Wasn't able to pick up her own trail and backtrack. Wasn't able to recall landmarks and follow them. Possibly she panicked and kept running even if she wasn't being chased. Possibly she went in circles until she was too tired to continue.

He stops, looks around. He's in a small clearing and standing in a patch of sun, clear sky above the faded blue of old jeans. Getting hot; sweat is trickling down his temples.

Something above his diaphragm is aching, as if he's been going too fast for too long. But he's kept his pace measured and steady. Hasn't been rushing at all. Knows better than to do that.

He winces and lays a hand over his stomach, pulls in a deeper breath—and smells the faintest whiff of sweet-sour decay, which is now merely a feature of the world.

 _You really wanna do this?_ Merle. Christ, it would be so outstanding if Merle would just shut the fuck up and be gone if he's gone. _You sure you wanna find her? What d’you honestly think her chances are? When you were out there you knew how make a fire, find a safe place to bed down, what to eat that probably wouldn't fuckin’ kill you even if you did fuck up with the poison oak. And you weren't contendin’ with a bunch of dead assholes lookin’ to chow down on your face._

_I don't think you wanna find her in the state she's probably in. Brother, you always was a softie, and I don't think that's somethin’ you wanna see._

_Go on. Quit while you're not too far behind._

He tips his head back and takes another breath, every muscle coiling. He's seen a room full of dead, snarling babies and hauled together the balls to get on with his day, but even with the heat, the world around him still feels kind, as if for the moment it's shed its cold ruthlessness. Merle always did take the darkest possible view. He gets why. And more often than not, he wasn't wrong, but there's no strict reason why that has to be the case now.

Beth was trapped, locked into one of the worst situations imaginable, and she survived.

_You found her. She would have been fucked otherwise._

Would she?

Can he be so certain of that?

And then, when things arguably got even worse, she didn't lose it. She held herself together. She did have instincts, correct ones, and enough sense to go with them. She had his back and in the end he wasn't sorry that she was there. She's just a kid, just a girl, but she made it, and she made it without him hoisting her ass out of the fire every five goddamn minutes.

Sophia might do the same, even alone. Nothing says she can't have.

He lowers his eyes and stares directly ahead, shifts his bow higher on his shoulder, and moves on.

~

It's late afternoon when he finds the house.

Stepping out from among the trees, he pauses and looks it over, easing down the sudden pounding of his heart. He observes that last from the kind of distance tracking allows him; it's the excitement that comes after hours of nothing, the exhilaration of the barest chance at the end of a hunt, and while it’s perfectly natural, it doesn't serve him now. He needs the distance, needs the aperture of every sense open to the fullest extent, the rest of him totally motionless and listening. For the rustle of something clumsy and not quite human. For a groan, or a hiss.

For the presence of something small and alive.

The house appears to have been abandoned long before most others were—or if it was occupied, it wasn't occupied by anyone who could or was inclined to maintain it. The slats on the roof don’t look as if they'll all last through the next strong storm. Only four window shutters remain. More than a few of the windows are broken, motheaten curtains visible through two of the ones by the front door. In truth he's seen houses nearly in shape this bad that were in fact still in use, but this place _feels_ empty. It feels more than dead, dry as old bones; there hasn't been enough life here for there to be death in a long fucking time. 

And he hears nothing except the creak of the shutters and the chatter of squirrels.

He raises the bow and starts forward, passage whispering-quiet as he can make it through the tall grass. But when he tops the short flight of steps and reaches the door, something brittle in him snaps, and before he can stop himself he's raising his leg—watching it raise itself—kicking the door open with a harsh _bang_ and a clatter that echoes through and out of the house, ringing off the walls.

He pauses again, breath held, fierce annoyance like a slap against the inside of his cheek. Stupid. Not even the thing itself, but how it _happened,_ of its own accord without his willing it so.

He keeps doing things he doesn't intend. He keeps blundering through a world he's no longer completely confident he understands.

_Like you ever did._

The interior of the house is jarringly dim, and he blinks as his eyes adjust, the complaining of the floorboards unnaturally loud as he moves past the stairs. If there are walkers, they haven't been alerted by the pointless drama of his entrance; if there's a little girl hiding here, she's staying silent. A fat fly buzzes sleepily against the shattered remains of a windowpane, but only one; nowhere near enough to indicate carrion. The air smells powerfully of dust and mold, rotting wood and the ghosts of garbage past.

Except that's not all there is. He draws in a slow lungful of that musty air, scenting it, nostrils flaring.

Fishy. Literally, fishy. Almost imperceptible, but it's there.

 _Hound dog,_ he thinks with thin amusement, edging slowly back through the hall and into what was once some form of kitchen before all the paint flaked away and everything was caked with layer upon layer of rust. _Actual hound dog. Look at you._

The intensity of the smell flares, rises up and halts him and just about tugs him backward by the nose. It smells bad, but also _fresh,_ and he leans close to the overflowing trash can, reaches down, and from the top of the heap he plucks an open sardine can.

Brings it close and examines it in the dust-thickened light.

Juice. Rapidly going rancid, but too fresh to have dried or congealed. Within the last day or so, someone peeled it open, ate the contents, and discarded it with a pathetic kind of neatness in the appropriate place.

He's not certain what makes him do it, what intuition drives him. He's never been certain; it’s the same one that always does. Slips a finger beneath his chin and raises his head, directs his vision toward what looks like a pantry in the corner, half lost in the shadows, narrow door ajar. Only darkness to be seen inside.

He's moving again, bow up, creaking across the floor. Anyone there will be keenly aware of him. Huddled behind that door, somehow maintaining enough control to keep from making a sound—unless it's fear that's got them frozen. All at once, just before he lays his hand on the door, he perceives himself clearly from the outside: rough, disheveled man with a hard face and narrow eyes, aiming a crossbow that must appear scarily big to a child. Thick hunting knife on his belt. Altogether dangerous, altogether untrustworthy.

Shit, he'd hide from himself.

His gut tightens and sinks, and he's holding his breath as he curls his fingers around the door and gently pushes it open.

Nothing. Mostly empty shelves, a few scattered cans he would be decidedly reluctant to crack. A broom. And in the weak shaft of sun shining past him, a rumpled blanket half pooled on the floor, as if recently wrapped around a small body before being dropped and forgotten.

_Shit._

Shit, she might have just been here. He might have missed her by only minutes. Heard him approaching and took off, perhaps, or crept away when he was an inexcusable dumbass and kicked the door open. He releases a short, tense breath and glances over his shoulder, looks back at the blanket, drops into a crouch and fingers its fold—as though he might be able to feel lingering warmth.

Of course, nothing.

Another exhale; he pushes to his feet and turns, strides rapidly toward the door hanging off its broken hinges and out of the house. He should take this methodically, should perform a thorough search of the rest of it; if she retreated, she might very well have beaten a path further into the house itself rather than making for the woods again. Cellar, could be, or upstairs. But once more he's letting that deeper instinct guide his feet, through the grass at just short of a jog, turning and scanning the treeline, the windows, the house as a whole.

“Sophia!”

She won't know his voice. But she’ll know her own fucking name. She’d have to be able to add two to two, get that he knows it because he knows the others.

But all he hears is the wind in the trees.

“ _Sophia!_ ”

_She runs._

She runs until her muscles are searing and cramping with acid, until her lungs are burning air like an engine breaking down. She hurtles through the trees, scratched by cruel thorns, the growls of nightmare monsters all around her, until finally she breaks through into the open. House. She doesn't stop to consider whether it's as empty as it looks. She doesn't stop to consider the new danger that might be lurking inside. She stumbles up the porch steps and squirms through one of the windows, which gapes open for her like a mouth. Straight through the dimness for the first dark corner she sees; she lunges into it, sinks to the floor and pulls her knees to her chest and hugs them, her face buried behind them. Gasping and trying so hard to be quiet. Soaked with sweat, her eyes stinging like tears. Soon actual tears. As night falls outside and a frantic search begins, she cries silently into the darkness and wonders when she’ll die.

At some point, hearing nothing but crickets and the soft calls of hunting owls, she slips out. In the next room she finds a ratty blanket; the night isn't cold but she wraps it around herself, shivering. She could roam the house and see what she can find, but imagined horrors wait in every shadow and the fear rises up and drives her back into the pantry, and she can't bear to go out again.

For lack of anything else to do, she blindly explores the shelves, finds a can she recognizes the shape of and knows she can get open without a tool. The sardines are disgusting but suddenly she's aware of how ravenously hungry she is, and she wolfs them down almost without tasting them. Then she's thirsty, salt harsh on her tongue and throat, but there's nothing to drink, and when she once again considers trying to scavenge through the dark ruins of the house, her muscles lock into immobility.

She pulls the blanket tight around her shoulders and cries again. After a while she sleeps.

Dawn. On the road, the others are stirring, preparing for one last search, but they won't go far enough, won't pick up the trail. In her hiding place she's lifting her head, blinking into the anemic light. The pantry smells overwhelmingly of pickled fish and she can't stand it, and anyway she has to pee, and maybe if she tries again she can find her way back; creeping like a frightened mouse, she emerges, and out of pointlessly well-mannered habit she disposes of her trash in the garbage can before she goes.

And the man who comes looking for her is too late.

In a maternity ward that reeks of blood and rotting flesh, a girl cringes into a corner, staring at the corpse barely feet away from her. She has no idea how much time has passed; only that it's been forever since the last terrified screams and the final rattles of gunfire faded to silence. Except it's not silence, because there's only a thin glass barrier between her and a room full of the worst kind of death she can conceive of.

Her friend’s baby is in there.

She lowers her head to rest against the tops of her knees, and she begins to weep for them. For herself. For everything.

And the man who isn’t looking for her but nevertheless finds her is almost too late.

Somewhere in the deep dark woods, a little boy is trying to squeeze himself into the termite-hollowed trunk of a tree. Moist sawdust and cobwebs are sticking in his hair, plastered to his tear-stained cheeks. A storm is rumbling in the distance, the wind picking up, and he's so hungry, and he knows he should want to go home.

But he's not sure he does.

And no one comes to look for him at all.

Something in him flickers and flares back on like a faulty bulb, and he realizes that he's standing in the grass, bow at his side, and he's shaking. Ripples of goosebumps running all along his skin, a core-deep trembling sourced in his spine.

He swipes a hand down his face. _Stupid fucking idiot._ Just standing here, fucking useless, when she's clearly long gone.

The sun is going down.

He’ll be even more useless in the dark, especially without someone as a spotter. Head back now, get some dinner, try not to brood and end up brooding anyway—thinking far too much about shit he doesn't and can't remotely control.

Thinking far too much about Beth and her angrily disappointed eyes. And whatever else he glimpsed behind them.

He's starting forward into the trees when an edge of white flashes in the corner of one eye. Breath catching, he spins toward it—stops. Not Sophia. Not any sign of Sophia.

But something.

He walks over to it, crouches in front of it and reaches out to trace a finger along the curve one of its pale petals. It's another piece of useless bullshit, and in his head Merle is rolling his eyes… But maybe he doesn't have to go back completely empty-handed after all.

Maybe.

~

He doesn't especially want to see her. But she's sitting on the porch steps as he approaches the house, hunched over something in her lap, hand moving. Writing in a small book, he sees when he gets closer, in the spill of light hanging over the doorway. Through that screen door, voices and the clink of dishes, and the smell of roasting potatoes. Behind him, the rest of the gang has built a sizable campfire and they’re gathered around it, their own low voices drifting to him, the words themselves unintelligible.

In this space, it's only him and her.

She raises her head. The light is mostly behind her, illuminating barely a third of her face, and its lines and angles are sharper, more severe. Her jaw is set and hard.

She looks far too old.

 _Girl, what the hell is_ with _you?_

Her gaze lands briefly on his before it drops to his side and what he's holding there. He's been keeping it tucked close to his body, trying as subtly as he can to conceal it—not positive of why he's doing that, only cognizant of the need to, and additionally cognizant of the fact that this isn't the first time in his life that he's done something along these lines.

He doesn't want to think in that direction.

But _she_ sees it. She couldn't miss it. And though her expression is utterly impassive, all at once it hits him, the unintentional impression he might be giving her and all the _extremely_ awkward things that might follow from it.

In his head, _it’s not for you_ sounds like a dick thing to say.

He clears his throat and gestures vaguely. “You got an empty beer bottle or somethin’ I can use?”

“Daddy doesn't ever drink,” she says simply. Flatly. “No one here does.”

Somehow that doesn't slightly surprise him. Oh, well. He persists. “A can or somethin’ like that, then? Anythin’?”

She stares at the rose for a moment or two, still unreadable. He shifts from one foot to the other, fighting welling impatience. If he'd known she was going to be all _difficult_ about this, he would have avoided her altogether, just turned the fuck around and gone off to root through the damn trash rather than deal with this bewildering shit. But as he's opening his mouth to propose precisely that, she cocks her head and gives him a tiny nod.

“We got Coke bottles.” She places the pencil into the middle of the journal, closes and lays it aside and rises to her feet. “Hang on, I'll get you one.”

He hangs on, faintly nonplussed. _Nonplussed_ has, at least, been his default feeling when it comes to this girl, so it's almost comfortable terrain to fall back to. He doesn't even kind of get her. She's like a fucking Rubik’s Cube; just when he thinks he has the sides close to lined up, it turns out one final adjustment throws the whole thing back into chaos. She's a self-complicating puzzle, and there's something so profoundly unfair about that.

You should be able to solve a puzzle, or not. One or the other, clearly delineated. They shouldn't keep darting away from you.

The screen door clacks open and she returns with a small clear bottle stripped of its label. It's clearly been washed, not even a fleck of glue remaining that he can see, and in his constantly evolving inner reel of footage, he sees a side by side comparison of what he expected to use, with what she's actually giving him.

Something squat, brown, probably dirty.

About as far as possible from what she's holding out to him.

Blinking at it, he takes it from her and turns it over in the dim light, watching it gleam. They don't make a habit of painstakingly washing their empty Coke bottles, he's pretty much sure. They're a very Nice family, but that seems like a weird stretch even for them.

She did it for him. Just because.

What the fuck do you even do with that.

“Thanks,” he says quietly.

Hint of another nod, and when he looks up she's transferred her attention from him to the fire over his shoulder. “Who’s it for?”

“Uh.” Grunt that doesn't come out altogether settled. Merle is now nearly rolling his eyes through the top of his skull. Jesus Christ, this is so stupid. It's a lame-ass thing, an empty fucking gesture. Childish. It's something a dumb kid would do. This woman lost her little girl in the woods and he's bringing her a damn _flower in a Coke bottle_ like it's worth anything next to that. He deserves every second of the mockery his brother would throw at him if he was here to see it.

But he's not.

Instead it's Beth standing in front of him, the steps bringing her face level with his. Her arms are crossed, her eyes inquisitive—and almost normal. Almost back to the girl he dragged out of the hospital. In full possession of herself, scared but holding together.

When exactly has she ever made fun of him? For anything?

He basically cried in front of her and she was just… _there._ No judgment that he could sense. Not one bit.

“It's for Carol.”

“Oh.” She lowers her chin, and there's something in the arrangement of her features that strikes him as oddly satisfied. “Okay.”

That appears to be all. He's turning to go, inserting the stem into the mouth of the bottle as he does, when she stops him.

“Daryl.”

He glances over his shoulder. He's not certain what to make of what he hears in that syllable. “Huh?”

“That's nice of you,” she says, voice soft. “It's real nice. I bet it’ll make her feel better.”

For a few seconds he merely looks at her, gnawing at his lower lip. Then he lifts the bottle, something like a salute, and heads off toward the fire.

Very slightly, he might be shaking again.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You'll note that I left out the scene where Daryl actually gives the rose to Carol, and I may not include it in the next chapter either. That's not because I don't consider it significant; it's one of my favorite scenes in the show's entire run. I think I may leave it alone simply because it's perfect as it is, we all know it happened, and I don't believe I can add much to it with my voice. What's going on in Daryl's head would clearly be a thing, but y'know, I might just let the man's own face and body and words speak for him and leave the rest of it be. 
> 
> So go watch it again. God, it is so wonderful.


	15. I’m keeping this as a keepsake and everything else forgetting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the third day, Daryl rides out in search of Sophia. It doesn’t go well. Beth, for her part, finally comes to an agonizing decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot tell you how excited I was to get to this chapter and how pleased I am with it. 
> 
> I actually intended to cover the entirety of the events of “Chupacabra” in one installment but the chapter would have been like twelve thousand words and that seems unwieldy. Don’t worry, I know how the next one goes and I’m back in a groove so you shouldn’t be waiting too terribly long. 
> 
> It's interesting how, while I'm still determined to never go back to I'll Be Yours For a Song, its flavor sneaks in here and there anyway. This Daryl feels to me a lot like a younger version of that one. 
> 
> Quick note: Merle says a very bad word in here. I went back and forth about including it and finally decided to do so, because it’s in the original scene and also it fits his character. It’s a thing he would say. He’s fucking racist as hell. Just be aware that it’s there.
> 
> I’m seriously so happy about this chapter, guys. Let me know what you think. ❤️

It's with mild surprise that Beth watches Daryl ride out toward the woods.

On her way back from milking the cows, unfamiliar movement in the direction of the east field tugs at her attention and she turns, one hand lifted to shade her eyes, and sees the shape of horse and man trotting away from the paddock—distant, but close enough for her to determine who it is.

Not which horse he's on. But it's odd that he's on a horse at all. Somehow she wouldn't have taken him for a man who knew how to ride, but he appears reasonably confident. Not precisely comfortable, but definitely not about to take a tumble.

She drops her hand and releases a breath. Doesn't take much deduction to guess what he's doing. Sophia again; she overheard the rest of them organizing the day’s search on her way to the cows. They're determined, in a way she finds almost touching. Once she would have been right there with them, or at least wanting to be, and part of her still does if she's honest, because part of her believes that the little girl might be out there to be found—in a state in which anyone would want to find her. She herself survived a situation she's very well aware should have killed her. She _made it,_ out of the city and back home. No one can say at this point that she's incapable of survival, even if she didn't do it totally on her own.

But no. No, she doesn't really believe. She doesn't believe, because in a world that does what it's done to her family, a little girl can't make it out there completely alone.

Not because she's weak, but because the world is brainlessly cruel, mindlessly brutal as one of the walkers, and it wouldn't allow such a thing.

But Daryl keeps looking too. And that—and the horse—are not the only things about him that are surprising her lately.

“He ask if he could take it?”

She jumps; Maggie at her elbow, and when Beth looks up at her she's following the line of Beth’s gaze, her mouth tight.

Beth rolls a shoulder, shifts the full milk pail from one hand to the other. “I dunno. Didn't ask me.”

“Yeah, me neither. And he hasn't been up to the house all morning.” Maggie makes a low _hmph_ noise, faintly disapproving—whether of him taking the horse or of Daryl himself is hard to say. Maggie knows that Daryl brought her back, and that's about the extent of it; she hasn't questioned Beth on the matter, and Beth hasn't been inclined to be forthcoming. She and Maggie haven't been saying much to each other, period. Conversation seems like a thing to be avoided. Even if it starts innocuously enough, it's entirely liable to wander in unpleasant directions.

She can't imagine Maggie feels warmly toward Daryl, from what she's seen. But she also doesn't blame her. Daryl Dixon has not revealed himself to be a man who inspires _warmth._

Although there was last night.

She still has no idea what to do with last night.

“You want me to tell Daddy?”

“Nah. I'll do it.” Maggie sighs and rakes her hair back from her face when the wind sweeps across the yard to tease it. “Christ, these people.”

That appears to be her last word on the subject. She strides away toward the house, her head up and her hands swinging at her sides, and not for the first time it occurs to Beth that there are things she doesn't actually know about her sister. More, now. There were things she didn't believe her capable of—not believed her _incapable_ of, but never considered at all.

Well. A changed world changes people.

Or it peels back the surface and exposes what was there the entire time.

She resumes her way to the house—and slows her pace when she sees that Maggie has not, in fact, gone in to tell Daddy about the horse. She's sitting on the porch next to Glenn, who’s holding a guitar in his lap, strumming it. She can just hear it from this far out, tuneful and somehow sad.

They're sitting awfully close. They're talking.

They went out yesterday, together, and when they came back, while they didn't behave any differently, she could have sworn there was nevertheless something different between them, as if they'd been altered on the cellular level and now their particles were interacting in a new way, even without physical contact.

 _Physical contact,_ she'd thought with uneasy speculation, and now.

_Oh._

Not her business. Not her goddamn business. Whatever implications it has, it is categorically not her goddamn business. But she feels a clench in her gut that she doesn't understand—no emotion that she can identify, which is troubling in and of itself. She knows her own heart by now. She knows how to name what she feels when it comes to her.

But she doesn't know this.

She keeps her gait slow. By the time she reaches the house, Maggie is inside and Glenn has gone back to his guitar. He nods at her, gives her a smile. There might be the tiniest sliver of nervousness in it, but she can't be sure.

_Yes, you can._

Well. At least he's not a jerk. Nothing of the kind, in fact. He's been singularly nice since he arrived. He was plenty nice to _her,_ anyway. Things could be worse.

_Could they?_

Yes. They're bad, they're _awful_ … but they most certainly could.

~

It's been a long time since he rode.

When _was_ the last time? Doesn't take much effort to recall; he'd been drunk off his ass but it had been memorable enough. Three years back: He and Merle got wasted, Merle went soaring on crystal, and took it into his head that an excellent use of what remained of the evening would be to break into one of those places near a state park that does trail rides for tourists, saddle up and take off. It took a surprising stretch of time for someone to discover what they'd done, and by then Merle had spent god knows how long galloping over the stretch of field near the paddock, waving a cowboy hat he'd snatched off some asshole’s head in a bar fight—which, now that Daryl thinks about it, is what spawned the idea in the first place—and howling _yah, giddyup buckaroo, git along little doggies, we’s a couple’a straight-up horse thieves. How about them apples, little brother? They gonna string us up in the middle of town if they ever catch us, so ride ‘em fuckin’ cowboy._

Daryl wasn't howling. Wasn't making any noise at all. Was _riding,_ head down over the thing’s neck all glossy in the moonlight, urging it on with his heels—though not so hard as he might have been. He didn't have to force it; it seemed to be running for the sheer joy of it. Flying over the grass, cresting a hill and looking at the dark ribbon of road not far down and ahead, and thinking with a kind of crazed exhilaration, with a knot in his throat, that maybe he didn't have to give the horse back, maybe he could just keep on riding, leave Merle behind to his clumsy drunken insanity and strike out across the wide open country. Head west. Hit a personal frontier and burst past it and run forever.

They dropped off the horses in the paddock and high-tailed it out of there ahead of the sirens.

And even then it had been _another_ while since. Because it came from somewhere, the skill that let him ride that way. He wasn't born with it. Not far from the house—not the one that burned but the one after—was a poor excuse for a farm occupied by a curmudgeonly old-timer with a limp and five crooked teeth to his name, a few chickens and a tired mare, and a weird affection for both him and Merle. Not a creepy one. Never tried anything. Just seemed to like them, and when they wanted to get away from the screaming and the blows, he showed them how to ride that tired mare, and then let them keep riding.

The mare was never fast, but as it turned out, she wasn't so tired once you gave her room to run the way she wanted to.

He's remembering this, as the horse takes him through the trees at a steady walk. It's fine that he's not moving faster than that; it would be inexcusably foolish to do it with this terrain, but also he's looking. Scanning everything, open wide.

And remembering.

He would really rather not do that. He shakes himself, swipes a hand down his face. It's hot, hotter than yesterday, and his hair is plastered to his temples and his shirt is stuck to his back. Itching a little, gnats darting at his eyes to sip the tears. It's not difficult to ignore them, but still, they’re something that needs ignoring.

The horse, also. It's pretty much like riding a bike, and he's being as gentle with her as he knows how, but she's skittish. He can feel it in her footfalls, in the muscles of her back and neck: a kind of vibrating tension, the sense of a spring winding up. Not bad, not something that goes as far as being immediately worrisome, but it's threading dim unease into him, making him take it even slower than he would be otherwise. He took her in order to cover more ground than he could on foot, but he's beginning to rethink that idea.

Well, fuck it. He's not going back now.

Squirrel halfway up a tree ahead. Heard him coming, and instead of doing the smart thing and skedaddling up into the branches, it's frozen, staring at him with shocked and beady eyes.

Casually and mostly without consideration, he sends a bolt through it and plucks it off the trunk as he rides by. Slides its limp little body under his belt. It's a bony thing, but for lunch it's better than nothing at all. Especially if he's out here in the heat and the gnats all the way to sundown, and in fact, he's a fucking idiot for not bringing along some—

At first it's the tantalizing shimmer of water through the trees and below to his left that catches him.

Then it's the doll.

Moving swiftly, barely taking his eyes off it as if it might vanish if he did, he dismounts and ties up the reins, approaches the lip of the gorge and peers down. A bit of a wonder that he even recognizes it as such, he thinks, because it's clearly been in the water a while and it resembles nothing so much as a lump of bedraggled cloth the color of pale mud. It's partially buried in silt, and really the only thing that tipped him off was the vaguely humanoid shape, its lolling head and one protruding arm, raised as if begging for help. The water sparkles cheerfully around it. The whole effect is profoundly disquieting.

Cautiously, he descends to it.

Fortunately the slope isn't as severe as it looked from the top. Squinting to see further up the creek when he reaches the bottom, it appears to get worse—at once rockier and consisting of looser soil and flimsier saplings—but although a slope is always more difficult on the ascent, it shouldn't be too bad. He bends and picks up the doll, shakes some of the sediment out of the ropes of yarn that serve as its hair. Blond, once. Pink dress spotted with white flowers. A happy smiling face, now scuffed and stained.

No way to know for sure that it's hers. But he's sure nonetheless.

“ _Sophia!_ ”

His own voice echoes back to him. Nothing else.

He grits his teeth as he stuffs the doll into his belt, with a judicious separation from the squirrel. Too late—again. But this time not cutting it so close. This likely isn't even where it was dropped; it has all the look of something that was lost some distance away and washed downstream. The creek is both shallow and rapid, and it wouldn't take much to carry something so light far from its point of origin.

She's not here.

Releasing a hard breath, he turns and hauls himself back up.

~

He gets less than an additional mile before it all goes to shit.

Because of course it does. Of course it was always going to. He knew it already—some part of him that perceives the world from a hawk-like vantage point gathered up all the information, processed it, and came out with the undeniable result. It was the horse that should have tipped him off, that nervous vibration, an indicator of how little it would take.

So it's his own fucking fault. As it usually is.

It happens in stages. It starts with the birds, three of them exploding up from the hollow log that had been serving as their hangout spot. The horse startles them, they startle the horse, and he's still trying to calm her, stroking her neck and murmuring the way he knows should work if anything can, when the cottonmouth decides to get involved.

Then a whole lot of falling, and a hell’s worth of pain.

Just like it happened in stages, he figures it out in stages—what actually happened, the deal he's been served now. First it's wetness, lukewarm water in his ears. Then it’s light, too much of it, hammering his corneas; he groans and turns his head away from it, and that only makes his head throb worse than it already is, which is considerable in and of itself. Then it's the rest of his body, his shoulders, arms, back, somehow it's as if he's landed on both hips at once, and every inch of his body is one giant relentless bruise.

Then it's his side, which is like the light refined and compressed into pure agony.

A grunt that's honestly more like a strangled yelp tears out of him as he reflexively pushes himself up, as if he can escape what's hurting him. He can't, because it's _in_ him—literally impaling him, the formerly bright fletching of the bolt dark with mud and his blood, and while for the moment nothing is touching it and as far as he can see it's gone clean through, every twitch of his body seems to drive it further into him.

He wants to scream. God, it would be good to scream. Blast the pain out of him through his throat, send it chasing after those fucking birds even though the snake bears more of the blame. He twists, craning his neck to get a better look, and releases a pitiful, canine whine through his teeth.

Not lethal. He’ll live.

Unfortunately.

He can't pull it out. He can't do that. He sits there, half on a flat, sun-warmed rock and half in the mud, his ass soaked and the water seeping into his crotch, and his options swim blearily around his head like stoned fish. He can't even fully identify them; they're foggy, and he can't make out much more than that they're present. But he knows which one _isn’t_ among them: he can't pull the thing out. Even the thought of doing so lurches his gut and sends bile burning into his throat. Surely that much pain would drive him mad. Surely it's better to bear it as it is until he can get back to the farm, or somewhere that isn't here, _anywhere_ , anywhere that isn't a flood of ruthless sensation and the certainty that he's utterly ridiculous for being in this position in the first place.

The bow. The world sways sickeningly as he looks around, moving according to the motion of his head—like one of those carnival rides, the big fake boats that swing back and forth in wide swoops, falling and rising and falling again. He always hated those. He hates carnivals in general. He would give a great deal to be out of this one.

It's nowhere in sight. Deeper water behind him—likely there, because that's how his day is going.

Crouching, jaw grinding against the pain as the screams he won't allow himself force their way out in more of those sad little whimpers and whines, he draws his knife and somehow doesn't cut himself as he half slashes and half rips off his sleeves. Poor binding for a wound, but it's what he's got, and it does feel as though it braces the bolt a minute amount, because when he shoves himself to his feet and staggers toward the long branch several yards away, it's something he can live with.

It takes another five minutes of poking around up to his thighs in the water to find the bow. Feels like ten. Feels like a fucking hour. Feels like an eternity, each muscle in his body taking its part in a gloriously fine chorus of torture. Stupid. Grasping for the bow, the slickness of the limb nearly slipping out of his hand, dragging the strap over his shoulder. So stupid. So _stupid._ He deserves every second of this.

Shaking in the trees on the other bank. Whispers. He whirls, briefly and mercifully forgetting his side and the lead weight in his head in favor of the flood of adrenaline, and focuses enough to search.

Nothing. Stillness. He’s aware that he's heading for half delirium; he probably didn't hear anything at all.

_Oh yes, you did._

_Get out. Now._

He pulls a ragged breath into his aching lungs. Another. Another. He's stupid, but he doesn't get to die down here, and he sure as hell doesn't get to sit on his wet ass and feel sorry for himself.

The doll came loose, is a few feet from where he hit bottom. Grunting with each step, he retrieves it, and looks upward.

Christ, it's a thousand fucking feet. No way. No way in hell.

He begins to climb.

~

_Stay away from it._

Until now, she's been able to. She's at least been able to keep what she supposes one could call a _healthy distance,_ though God, isn't that a bad joke and a half. But no matter what she's doing—chores, eating, bathing, in her bed unable to sleep, writing blithe nothings in her journal like she's trying to construct a world that she'll look back on with the belief that it was all a hideous nightmare and everything is truly okay—she feels it. Tugging her, like a black hole that's caught her in its gravity well. She won't plunge into it right away, no: she'll orbit it for a while, pretending at controlling her own trajectory. But sooner or later that orbit will decay and she'll tumble past the event horizon, and it'll crush her beyond all recognition.

More than kill her, somehow. Deeper than that. This is not about losing her shit and smashing the lock and pulling the doors wide to greet the rest of her ravenous family. This is not even about becoming one of them and walking with them until she quite literally falls apart. If that's even possible. If that's even a thing that can happen anymore.

This is about something much, much worse.

She sits here now, in the shade beneath a tree with an uneaten chicken sandwich in one numb hand, and she stares unblinkingly at the barn and she feels herself losing the fight.

She's slipping away. Now and then she manages to convince herself that she can hang on another hour, another day, that she's even _getting used to it_ , that she'll manage to drag herself to the place where Maggie and Daddy and Patricia are—where this state of affairs is, if not ideal, than at least acceptable. She'll beat into her brain the lie they've been clinging to: that it might yet be all right, that the people they love might not be gone forever, that they’re trapped somewhere inside those shambling abominations, wounded but intact, and all they need is the right medicine to free them and make them whole.

She wants to be that crazy. Before, she was appalled by the idea of it, but now she wants it so desperately. As lies go it's not sustainable, but if she could only live inside it for a little while, allow it to enfold her in its illusory protection, it would be better than this. It would be so much better than sitting in this wasteland of truth as, bit by bit, that black hole in the world sucks her soul away.

Right now, the worst thing she can imagine is sanity.

 _But that's not the worst that can happen. Oh, no. You might not be able to see it, but you can feel the terrible potential of it gathering all around you, like a patch of icy water in an otherwise warm pool. You don't know_ how _it can get worse, but you know that it_ can, _and if you don't do something, and soon, it_ will _._

_Is the worst thing sanity? Or is it watching everyone else you care about, everyone who's left, ripped to bloody shreds in front of you? Watching it, and knowing you could have stopped it if only you had the guts?_

She feels something damp and squishy yielding between her fingers and packing itself under her nails, and she looks down and sees that she's mashed the sandwich into pulp in her shaking fist.

She hears a gagging sound, realizes that it's her own throat twisting in on itself as she hurls the sandwich away and wipes her hand furiously on her jeans.

White bread and pale meat beneath her fingernails. The comforting old gray-brown slats of the comforting old barn, hunched innocently in the summer sunshine. The structure of countless childhood games of hide-and-seek, the place where she sprained both ankles jumping out of the hayloft on a dare, and the site of her first excited, jittery kiss with an equally excited, jittery boyfriend who's almost certainly dead. Who she hasn't even thought about until now.

She's not a good person.

This is not a world for good people.

_You have to do it. You know you do._

Mama. Beth moans softly, her head falling back against the trunk and fireworks bursting behind her eyes. So calm, she is. Dead people can be calm, because they're safe and nothing is hurting them anymore. No. No, Mama. Please. _Please, I can't._

_If I tell him, that makes it real._

Mama is calm. But Beth has heard this tone of voice before and she knows exactly what it means. _You know you gotta do it, sweetheart. You gotta find a way to make it happen. Mind me, now._

But what he’ll do. What _will_ he do? How many flavors of disaster are there? Scream at her? Scream at Daddy? Try to fight him? Try to set the others against him, start a much bigger fight that none of them will be able to contain? Charge to the barn and batter open the doors, put them all down in front of everyone? Put bolts through Mama and Shawn’s heads?

Leave?

_You worry about that after. You don't have any say in it. He’ll do whatever he does. You have one job now, and you know what it is._

_We've all got jobs to do, Beth. All of us. Even you._

She buries her face in her hands, trembling. But her eyes are completely dry. Dry as summer dust, blowing away in the wind.

_All right. I will. Please forgive me._

_I will._

~

_Don't look down._

It's a cliché, but it's also damn good advice. You don't look down on a climb, not until you're safe, and especially not if you're inclined to vertigo anyway.  But apparently he's not done being a dumbass, because here he is, clinging to a scraggly shrub which feels like it could tear free from the gorge wall at any moment, sweat stinging his eyes and blurring his already unreliable vision, and he's looking down.

Squeezing his stinging eyes closed and turning hurriedly back to face the slope as another wave of nausea rocks him. Fuck. The shrub’s roots quiver ominously and he drags himself another foot or so, perversely grateful that the pain in the rest of his body has risen to the level of his side, blending it all together and sparing him that bright hot continuously stabbing arrowhead.

“C’mon,” he mutters, digging the stick into the nearest soft patch of earth and using it to lever himself up. “You done half, stop bein’ such a pussy.”

There comes a point, a few minutes later, when he really thinks he might be all right. The top appears practically close enough to grab; maybe a few more feet at most. His breath is strained and coming quicker, black roses pulsing at the edges of his vision, but if he's this close he can do it, it's nearly over—

And the world slides out from under him and he's tumbling, ass over fucking teakettle, the slope pummeling its fists into his skull and back and sides with every bounce and twist. Too much in shock to yell. He's silent as he falls, until the rocks and the water rise up to greet him and he meets them so hard he's certain he's broken every bone simultaneously.

_Oh, hey. Great to see you again, thought you left._

Dappled light flitting over him like fireflies. Sun making its ponderous way across a dense blue sky. The hissing chuckle of the waterfall. Glitter of water. It almost feels soothing around his head. He scrabbles a hand at his side and beneath himself, pushes—fails with a sense of cracking and a groan, and collapses the last few inches to the rock.

He can't even see the slope anymore. Not sure if it's because it's literally out of his field of vision, or if it's merely that his vision is failing along with the rest of his body.

The rest of _him._

This is pointless. Maybe he should just go the fuck to sleep.

A shadow casts itself across him, silhouetted against that dense sky, instantly cooling his skin. He blinks up at it, struggling to make it out. Walker. Walker come out of the trees, the ones that were rustling, and it's going to make a lunch of him, and he should have anticipated that it was going to go this way. End this way.

When he doesn't come back… She’ll wonder.

Won't she?

No, not a walker. He knows that worn, grizzled face, that sardonic grin. Knows it far too well. This time the nausea has nothing to do with dizziness, and he lets out another groan.

This is completely impossible, but that's not an obstacle for much these days.

Merle grunts with wry amusement. “Why don't you pull the arrow out, you fuckin’ dummy? You could bind your wound better.”

He licks his cracked lips—so ironic that he's soggy everywhere but his lips are dry as the proverbial damn desert. “Merle.”

Merle scans him up and down, arching a brow. “What’s goin’ on here? You takin’ a siesta or somethin’?”

“Shitty day, bro.”

“Aw. Like me to get you a pillow? Maybe rub your feet?” Ah, there's that beloved old contempt, well-worn and even horribly comfortable. He knows this. This is thoroughly mapped territory, as much as any kind of suffering ever was.

“Screw you.”

Merle shakes his head. He seems to be wavering very slightly, transparent at the edges. Like heat haze. “You're the one screwed, from the looks of it. All them years I spent tryin’ to make a man of you, this what I get? Look at you. Lyin’ in the dirt like a used rubber. You gonna die out here, little brother. And for what?”

Indeed, admittedly a fair question. “Girl.” He shudders. “They lost a little girl.”

Merle’s eyes dance, like the motes around his outlines—gleefully mocking, even if he's not laughing aloud. “Oh, you got a thing for little girls now?”

“Shut up.”

“‘cause I noticed,” Merle continues, cocking his head thoughtfully, “you ain't out there lookin’ for ol’ Merle no more.”

Sucker punch. He should have seen it coming, but again: he should have seen all of this coming. Every cell in his body is throbbing; now that throb works its way into his core, winds itself around him like that treacherous snake. And is it wrong? Is any of that wrong?

“Tried like hell to find you, bro.”

“Like hell, you did. You split. You lit the fuck out, first chance you got.” Merle’s lips pull into a thin, scornful line. “Found that _little girl_ and suddenly you a lot more interested in her, ain’tcha?”

This is not going anywhere good. He can perceive it ahead, dim as the outlines of Merle’s form. All at once he wants nothing more than to scramble to his feet and find it in himself to run, do his own galloping as fast as he can away from this increasingly hazardous exchange. “ _You_ lit out. All you had to do was wait. We came back for you, Beth and I. Woulda done right by you.”

“Yeah? ‘cause honestly, I ain't so sure about that. Not that I totally blame you, don't get me wrong. She's cute as hell. Kinda lackin’ in tits and ass, but that ain't necessarily a dealbreaker. Pussy is pussy and I'd bet hers is perfectly fine. She's _barely legal,_ but hey. That has its charms.” He tilts his head further, smile turning sly. “After all this time, you finally figured out what your dick is for besides pissin’ through. Just happened to be at my expense.”

 _No._ The snake thing has gone jagged and is coiling around his sternum and through his ribs, rusty wire made of what might be fury, what might be disgust… and what might be something else entirely. “It ain't like that. I ain't like that.”

“You're a joke is what you are. Playin’ errand boy to a bunch of pansy-asses, niggers, and Democrats. You’re nothin’ but a freak to them. Redneck trash. ‘s all you are. They're laughin’ at you behind your back.” Merle huffs a laugh of his own. “Even her. Shit, _definitely_ her. She been around you more than any of ‘em, she knows what you are. Think she _wanted_ to bring you home to _Daddy?_ Think she ever woulda wanted to be seen with you if the world hadn't gone to hell? Never, ‘cept she wanted what she could get outta you. You know that, dontcha? You know it’s true.”

With every word, Daryl is fighting back a wince. With every word, it gets worse. Suddenly not seeing Merle anymore; seeing Hershel regarding him with cool, evaluating eyes, sizing him up. Being formally polite, but deeply unimpressed. Jingling those figurative car keys. Perhaps coming to some very unsavory conclusions about this unsavory man’s intentions.

Amazing he didn't tell Daryl to keep his distance from _his little girl_ straight out and direct.

Merle gently slaps his cheek, and stars go supernova in his retinas. “Hey. They ain't your kin. Your blood. You just a junkyard mutt to ‘em, gonna take a great big shit on their nice clean floor. But them other mutts in the junkyard, they take in their own.” Merle leans in closer, eyes shining though the sun doesn't touch them. “Now you listen to me,” he says softly. “Ain't nobody ever gonna care about you except me, little brother. Not even her. Especially not her. Ain't nobody ever will.” He pushes back, apparently ready to conclude this miserable conversation. “Now c’mon. Get up on your feet ‘fore I have to kick your teeth in.”

Reaching down, tugging at Daryl’s pant leg. Persistent. Daryl moans, kicks weakly at him; Merle’s nature, through and through—not just an asshole but a _pest_ , and taking mean pleasure in being so. More tugging and he kicks again, manages to lift his head, and finally wrestles back the whirling inside his skull enough to focus.

That. That is not Merle.

Once more, pure instinct overcomes the pain, and if he ever prayed he would send up a prayer of thanks for that, because it's what saves him. Abruptly frantic, with strength he wouldn't have believed he still possessed, he shoves and beats the growling, groping thing off him, and with grim satisfaction notes that his boot has nearly broken off the walker’s jaw, hanging it only by a thick tether of sickly greenish meat. He rolls further away, fumbling for what he knows is there—brings up the stick as the walker lunges at him, surprisingly fast for something that should be slow, and thrusts it away from him. It totters backward, falls, and then he's on it, straddling it as he brings the stick down once, twice, caving its spongy skull in and spattering gray-pink brains across the rock.

More growling. He looks up: another one, closing rapidly, a horribly eager spark in its otherwise blank, cloudy eyes. He's already bloody, already torn open; he must smell delicious.  A delectable treat if he would only hold still and be eaten.

Bow. He didn't realize that he saw it, but he did, and the image surges up in his mind as he throws himself blindly toward it, manages to seize it with shaking fingers and draw it to him.

No bolts. He stares at it, blank as the walker. No bolts. Useless except as a club, and if the thing gets that close to him…

He can feel himself flagging, but he might be able to employ the same tactics twice without a bite or a scratch. Might. Possibly.

Not good enough.

As if reminding him—waving a hand like an overenthusiastic kid in a classroom, _ooh, me, me, I know the answer—_ his side sends up a brilliant eruption of pain, and he's grasping the bolt’s shaft before he has time to consciously make the decision. No care in this, no gentleness with himself; he can't afford it. He _jerks_ it out of him, feels it rip at his flesh as it comes free, and muffles his shriek behind it as he clamps it in his teeth and braces the bow on the rock, his boot in the stirrup, and hauls desperately at the strings.

He doesn't have to think. That's the thing, the one blessing. He's shit at thinking, he's a fucking idiot like everyone has always told him since he was old enough to understand, but to do this, thinking is unnecessary. It's all muscle memory. All knowledge woven into the fibers of him.

He loads. Aims. Shoots.

The walker drops to his right, bolt through its forehead. Dead center. Perfect.

Beautiful.

So then, given that as far as he's concerned he’s earned it, he allows himself the luxury of passing out for a little while.

~

Only for a little while.

Getting up isn't as hard as he feared. Wobbling, he works the knot of the binding around his waist loose, rebinds it. Minor spill of blood as he does, but not much; it looks nasty, _is_ nasty, and if he doesn't take care of it it'll turn septic with all the confident swiftness of an Olympic sprinter. But that's an issue for later.

Now is for something else.

He told Andrea about getting lost. The truth is that that time was only the first time—first time of many. He always made it out to be an accident, because being a useless dumbass and getting lost was somehow more excusable than purposefully running away, but it was intended. Oh, it most certainly was. The fear fled him quickly, and was replaced by the pleasure of running through the shadows, through the dark, basking in the sun and sleeping under the stars even in the chill of autumn. Surrounded only by trees, their benignly looming shapes. Animals that might come near him but never attacked; they weren't exactly his friends, but there was an understanding between them. When he was hungry and hunted them or set snares, it was only fair—lots of creatures hunted. No resentment on either side. No one delivered any bewildering and capricious demands of him, no one forced him into sadistic games that he could never win. Crouched over a rough campfire, bloody up to the elbows, dirt-caked and not caring, he was an animal himself. He was a little wild thing. There was no goodness in it, but in its way it was enough.

He didn't have to think about shooting the bow. He doesn't have to think about this. Because if he's going to do it, get it done… He can't be like them. That isn't him. If he tries to fake it, he’ll fail—at convincing them, and then at everything else he tries to do. There's their way and then there's _his_ way, and his way doesn't involve sleeping in a nice house with nice people, doesn't involve being a tame animal in a stranger’s camp, and it sure as _fuck_ doesn't involve hanging around a Nice Girl.

Like a forlorn puppy, hoping for scraps from her hand.

Raw squirrel isn't exactly tasty. But there's a savage kind of sweetness in the coppery flavor of its blood.

And after, standing there in the water and admiring his new set of trophies in the afternoon sun, he takes morbid pleasure in how grisly it all is. A fantasy: Taking them back to the camp. Flaunting them. Shoving them in people’s faces. Hurling the doll at Carol, because _fuck_ the extraordinary look in her eyes when he set the rose down in front of her and said all that stupid shit he said— _here you go, lady, it ain't no flower and it ain't no little girl but maybe you can cuddle it tonight anyway_ —and capering around the fire _like a red injun_ Merle would say. Not hiding any of it. Not pretending. Showing them.

Showing _her._

 _Yeah, bitch._ This _is what you brought home. Like it? You like me now?_

He slings it around his neck. Gazes up at what's in front of him.

Climbs.

~

But of course Merle won't leave him alone.

A third of the way up—sure, he looks to take its measure, fucking _sure_ he does—Merle’s faintly dreamy but alarmingly solid ghost appears at the top, staring down at him. Watching Daryl’s progress with palpable enjoyment.

“Please,” he crows as four actual crows swoop out of the trees, “don't feed the birds. What's the matter, Darylina? That all you got in you? Throw away that purse and climb.”

Fuck Merle. Just fuck him. Just fuck him forfuckingever; he's not dead, but at the moment the thought of him burning in Hell is distinctly attractive.

He gropes for a sapling, grasps it, hangs on. “Liked you better when you was missin’.”

“Aw, c’mon. Don't be like that.” Plaintive. Ha. “I'm on _your_ side.”

“Yeah? Since when?”

“Hell, since the day you were born, baby brother,” Merle says solemnly. “Somebody had to look after your worthless ass.”

Daryl might not be smart. But he remembers. He remembers everything. He remembers things he would give anything to be able to carve out of his memory and toss over his shoulder into his new best friend the gorge. And at present he is not in a mood to be forgiving about _any_ of it. “You never took care of me. You talk a big game, but you was never there. Hell, you ain't there now.” He glares up at Merle. “Some things never change.”

“You got that right.” Merle bends down, and with a sharp pang of dread Daryl sees the glint in his eye turning cruel. “Hell, let’s be real about this, man. Let’s be real about what happened back there. You’re right, it ain't like that. You don't see her _that way,_ naw. You don't wanna nail her ass ‘cause you never did wanna nail no bitch anyhow. Bet if she was naked as a jaybird right in front of you with those skinny legs spread wide, you couldn't get it up for her.”

Fuck. He could just—

He could kill him. He could absolutely fucking kill him. No hesitation and no regret. The rage is sudden, vicious, blinding, drowning the world in red mist. Where it comes from is beyond him, too deep and too big to understand; it seems to come from _everywhere,_ from the trees and the rocks and the hateful sun and the equally hateful loose soil under his hands. Words aren't sufficient to express it.

So naturally his words are pathetic.

“You best _shut the fuck up._ ”

“Or _what?”_ Merle is roaring, jubilant—knowing that he hit a home run, put a hole dead center of the target. Few things ever pleased him as much as landing a blow precisely where he intended to. “You gonna come up here and shut my mouth for me? Well, c'mon and _do_ it, then, if you think you're man enough.” Rolling on like a damn freight train, showering words on him like hail. “If you can't fuck, you can at least _fight_. Like you said, baby brother. Some things never change. Now kick off them high heels and climb, son.”

Up. Up. Clawing with his splintered fingernails, that red, nearly hysterical rage blasting through his pores like heat. Doesn't make one iota of difference that Merle isn't really there; when he gets there _—when_ —he's going to use those splintered nails to rip his brother’s fucking throat out.

Make sure he never says this ugly shit again.

Merle’s voice slides into a lazy, comfortable drawl. “You know what, if I was you I'd take a pause for the cause, brother, ‘cause I just don't think you gonna make it to the top.” But bending further now, so close. So enticingly, bloodthirstily close. “C’mon. C’mon, baby brother.”

The nastiest grin Daryl has ever seen in his goddamn life, ear to ear. 

“ _Grab your little girl’s hand_.”

He flings his hand upward, and there's nothing above the edge but air.

He's shaking so hard that for a nightmarish half second, he's sure he's going to fall back down. There's no way he sticks this landing. Then he's clawing, standing, gasping and sweating and hurting so bad—and alone among the whispering trees.

Just like he always is, in the end.

“ _Yeah, you piece of shit, you better run!_ ”

Jesus fucking Christ. What the fuck even is he.

Leaning against a tree and breathing. Gathering himself—gathering everything he's got left.

Going back.

 


	16. when I met you, you were bitter still

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl finally makes it back to the farm. He doesn't exactly get the greeting he would have hoped for. It's extremely far from what Beth would have hoped, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So guess what: There's one more chapter after this before we finally take our leave of this episode. Yeah, I know. But I'm guessing few of you will be upset by the prospect of remaining here a while longer. 
> 
> We're approaching the MSF. I'm excited. 
> 
> Thanks so much for being here. ❤️

It’s probably predictable, even old-fashioned to a slightly embarrassing degree, but out of all the rooms in the house, aside from her bedroom, the kitchen is where she feels most at home.

Or she did. At least, knowing it so well, she can move through it without much thought. Fetching bowls and pots from their cupboards and racks, potatoes from the pantry and butter from the fridge, weaving her way easily around people—even people who are unfamiliar in this space and therefore cumbersome. She can manage.

Do her job.

It's not that she doesn't like Carol and Lori. They're fine. Like Glenn, they’ve been nice to her. And there's a kind of sadness in them that she feels an increasingly withered part of herself reaching for like a stunted plant stretching itself toward sunlight, knowing its own kind. Knowing what might sustain it. What’s in them is loss, or coming far too close to it. Loss and fear, although now, in the warm evening light surrounded by the cheerful sound of cooking, they're doing their best to make everything seem normal. Chatting with Maggie about safely meaningless things, things so meaningless that they slide past her without identification. The words melt into the muffled incoherence that always represents adult speech in the old Peanuts cartoons. Not a problem; no one is really talking to her, and she's not expected to respond. In fact, her distance is likely perceptible—which she's not worrying about.

She's doing what Mama said. She's not worrying about it. What she's understanding, in a way she never has before, is that once you've arrived at a decision—even a dreadful one—you find a small, still center inside yourself which makes it all easier.

It's even helping her ride through the pain of seeing Mama in every single place she looks. The battered old cutting boards on the center island. The striped dishtowel hanging by the sink. The potholders with the family of bears baking cookies on them. The stove with the one unreliable burner that can be managed by jiggling the handle just right. The stained crystal wine glasses on the highest shelf, a wedding present from Mama’s own parents and reserved for only the most special occasions—and never, of course, for wine.

It’s almost a gentle kind of pain. Before, it had been like the heaviest downpour she had ever seen. Now it's more like a thick fog. It makes everything quiet.

It's not going to be okay. But now she knows what her job is. And everyone has jobs to do.

As soon as he gets back, when she gets a moment alone with him, she’ll do hers. And then whatever happens…

Well, it happens.

About a third of her attention follows Maggie out of the kitchen when Daddy calls her into the dining room. There's a tension in Daddy’s voice, and her suspicions regarding what it's about are confirmed when she makes out a snatch of their conversation— _the Asian boy._

Maggie, uncomfortable. Withdrawing. _He's a friend._

 _Sure. Sure he is._ Beth turns away and releases a breath, and all at once the fog dissipates enough for a jagged shard of meanness to thrust its way out of her ground. Maggie, screwing around with a nice _Asian boy_ while her mother and her brother rot in a barn less than a football field away. Like she doesn't even care anymore. Like she's _over it._

Why _should_ she care? They were never her blood.

And Beth is only halfway there.

 _Bitch._ She hates the word even as it slithers off that shard and solidifies itself between her ears. Hates it, and then that hatred turns further inward even as a fantasy of slapping Maggie’s face so hard her mouth bleeds unfurls before her inner eyes. _You selfish, heartless bitch._

 _“‘_ scuse me,” she mumbles, pushing past Lori and heading for the hallway and the downstairs bathroom. Door shut, locked. She basically never locks bathroom doors. Or she never used to.

She doesn't bother with the light. In the half-obscured illumination of the window, she braces her hands on the sink and stares at herself in the mirror, and draws a very slow breath.

She doesn't look sixteen. She doesn't look seventeen, or eighteen, or twenty or thirty. She looks like someone beyond age, someone who's been kicked outside of normal time by some catastrophic event and is now all ages at once. Her face is still round and childish, her lips small and full—and she's haggard, wan, pits under her eyes standing out dark on skin that's far too pale. Her small, full lips look vaguely gray.

 _I look dead,_ she thinks, and discovers that she has no particular opinion about it. _I look like I'm already dead. How about that._

Later, she’ll regard this as another inflection point, when she turned directly toward another decision. The biggest one.

The only one that counts.

Now she only lets her head loll between her shoulders, loose strands of hair hanging in her face, and she thinks _come back come back come back come back so I can be done with this._

_Come back and help me. Please._

Sudden shouting outside, through the window. She shoves herself up and whirls to it, pushing the lace curtains aside. People running from the camp, close enough for her to see the surprised apprehension on their faces. Hurrying toward the RV.

Hurrying toward the field.

“Walker! _Walker!”_

She squeezes her eyes shut and pulls the curtain so hard on the rod that she hears the seams begin to pop. She told them. She tried. She tried to make them listen, but she didn't try hard enough. She didn't try the right way.

And now.

She turns and unlocks the door, yanks it open, rushes down the hall and breaks into a run before she even reaches the porch.

_Here we go._

~

At first he can't quite believe he made it.

Might be seeing things. He's been seeing a lot of different things over the course of the last couple of hours. Merle again, though this time only cackling and taunting indistinctly, keeping a prudent distance. Walkers except not walkers; _carnie_ walkers, some wearing tattered clown suits, round red noses and big floppy shoes. Walkers wearing bloody checkered coats and toting popcorn that turned out to be writhing maggots, cotton candy that revealed itself to be a swirl of human tongues stitched together. Organ grinder walkers with dead monkeys. Barker walkers, calling not for him to come see the lizard woman and the three-headed man but instead for the other walkers to come see _him._

_Ladies and gentleman, geeks of all ages! See the incredible redneck asshole who thinks he can be in the same room with normal people and not be laughed at! Stare at the inbred imbecile who actually believes anyone might voluntarily tolerate his company! Gawk at the backwoods idiot who entertains the possibility that anyone could ever give two shits about him! Folks, you won't credit your own eyes!_

He snarled at them, suggested that he might like to add their ears to his collection. They only tittered and danced onward, walker acrobats stacked up three men high on a big blue ball.

The ground heaved and dipped, sticks rearranging themselves into the tracks of a rollercoaster. Falling light struck the shining, nodding leaves and hardened them into funhouse mirrors. The birds sang discordant carousel music.

He wondered—wonders, as he staggers into the field—whether severe concussions can actually make you batshit crazy, or if this was in him the whole time and only needed the right kind of impact at the right angle to knock it loose and get it rolling.

One thing he _didn't_ see is the chupacabra. He's frankly kind of disappointed about that.

But when the field doesn't waver and vanish into itself like any sensible mirage would do, when it remains solid and present and the tall grass scratches pleasantly against the backs of his hands, when he sees the broad roof of the house and the white flashes of its sides, hears the excited yells, he knows it’s real.

The yelling is weird, though. The hell’s that about? And why is it getting closer to him? Why are people running toward him, little dark ant-specks against the deepening gold? Last he checked, walkers aside, he wasn't anywhere near that exciting.

Whatever. He doesn't need to get it. He doesn't need to get anything other than one fucking foot in front of the fucking other. Left, right, left, right, that stupid ditty Merle brought back from boot camp. _I don't know but I've been told, Eskimo pussy’s mighty cold._

Sound off, motherfuckers. Just sound the fuck off.

Baring his teeth in a ghastly smile, finally abandoning all lingering pretense at sanity, he goes to meet his new friends.

~

“Shane, hold up!” Rick turning, one hand out as if to pacify, trying to hide his agitation under a flimsy veneer of authority. “Hershel wants to deal with walkers!”

Shane, unsurprisingly, is brushing him off, veering past him and toward the field, calling back over his shoulder. “What for, man? We got it covered.”

Why is that unsurprising? She's mulling as she hurries along with the others, with Glenn and T-Dog—she'd guess that if anyone noticed her, she would be invited very firmly to _not_ come with, but their focus is all on the walker stumbling through the grass. Which is as it should be. This is what everyone should be paying attention to. This is a lesson, even if only one, a harbinger of more; if there can be one, there can be two, three, ten, twenty, a whole herd of them ponderously stampeding their hungry way across the countryside.

She told them. She warned. She was right. She's going to be here to see the truth of it, the big bad world teaching them what she couldn't.

Hell, if Daddy makes enough of a big deal out if it, maybe this will do her job for her.

But why is it unsurprising that Shane is brushing Rick off? Seems like a ludicrous thing for any fragment of her attention to be dwelling on, but one is dwelling there nonetheless as her boots pound from the harder packed soil of the yard to the softer, churned clods of the field. It's not just that he's doing it; it's _how_ he's doing it. Casual, cavalier. Also mildly irritated. Like Rick is merely an annoyance to be swatted away.

Not someone worth listening to.

Then all her focus is locked ahead of her, the rich green stripe of the trees and the long shadows stretching over the gold, the rolling hills in the distance cut across by dark roads and more gridwork patches of woods and fields, the dreamy blue mountains ridged along the horizon. the brown and white backs of the cows in the next field as they graze. Ropes of pastel cloud sunlit against a paler sky, through which undulate graceful black flocks of starlings.

The crooked form of the walker, shambling resolutely toward them.

It's so beautiful. This place is so beautiful. It's everything she ever wanted, everything that could have satisfied her. Boyfriend, husband, children—sure, whatever, those would have been wonderful, children in particular, but really and mostly this _land,_ its clear water in her blood and its warm earth in her flesh and its cool smooth rocks in her bones. It's been with her and inside her from her first breath. She could have _lived_ here, gone on living here, made her whole life here, given herself to it, built something and made it grow.

That’s all gone now.

The field and the hills and the clouds blur away and she knows she's weeping as she runs, once stumbling and nearly falling before she rights herself and keeps on going. Because it's dead. The world turned poison, and vicious and cruel, and struck like a snake and killed it.

It's dead, and it just hasn't begun rotting yet.

Behind her, alarmed shouts for Andrea not to. Not to what? What is Andrea doing? Andrea was on the roof of the RV with a rifle, she remembers, and had been arguing with Dale about something. Andrea wants to shoot it. Andrea wants target practice. Dale is trying to get Andrea to not kill the walker, and Rick is trying to get Shane to not kill the walker, and they don't understand that it's the _only way—_

She skids to a halt, gaping, as everything still intact inside her goes down with a rumble of thunder and a cascade of glittering shards like a demolished building.

Her hands fly to her mouth and she takes a step back. Another. Her legs are earth and they're crumbling. She’s dimly aware that somehow she passed them all, and now it's her name that they're yelling as they sprint toward her and the walker, crying for her to _get back, get away—_

She wanted him to come back.

He came back.

And now, if Daddy has his way, he’ll go in the barn with the others and not be allowed to die.

“I'm sorry,” she whispers as her hands drop loose to her sides, and she’s frozen, trembling like a cornered animal as he comes toward her. _Comes for her._ It doesn't matter and she's not afraid of him; he won't reach her before Shane and the others do, and they'll take care of it. They'll take care of him. Maybe she won't even have to watch.

No. Of course she will.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice is a rough croak. She barely sounds like herself. She didn't even say goodbye to him when he went out. She didn't say anything to him this morning at all. What was the final thing she said to him last night? She can't remember. His face level with hers, his expression hesitant, clearly uneasy meeting her eyes but meeting them anyway, and what she saw there. The wildflower in his hand and what he was doing with it. What he asked her for.

And now he looks like this. Now this is what he is, and _this_ is how she’ll remember him.

“Daryl, I'm so sorry, I'm _so sorry—”_

His gait—that regular, mindless, plodding gait—falters. Stops. He _stops_ and he stands there, teetering and _panting and blinking at her,_ profound bafflement giving life to his formerly blank, blood-smeared features.

“The fuck?” Even more of a croak than hers, like his vocal cords have been scraped with a toothbrush. Or like he's been screaming. A lot. “Girl, what the hell you _sorry_ for?”

“ _Andrea, no!”_

She takes a step toward him, her lungs fluttering in her chest like the wings of a frightened bird. Starts to run again.

She's less than a yard away when the rifle shatters the air and he goes down.

~

This is extremely unfair.

That's his one thought as his head explodes. Absurd, but well, boys and girls, _absurd_ is our word of the day. He blundered his own dimwit ass down into a wet and rocky hell, _twice_ , tried climbing out, _twice_ , literally stabbed himself, somehow survived the myriad other consequences of his dimwittedness, lost what little remained of his mind, had a seriously infuriating fight with his brother who wasn't even there, went through all that to lug a creek-trashed doll and his own pitiful carcass back here—before sundown, even—only to have his head explode.

 _Absurd_ is one word. _Unfair_ is the other. Absurdity implies an intrinsic lack of fairness because it further implies a universe in which _fairness_ never really existed in the first place, he ponders as the ground rises up to meet his battered body for the hundred millionth time today—Christ, aren't they getting sick of each other yet? The ground should fling him into the sky, up to join the starlings. How you learn to fly, he thinks he read once, is that you throw yourself at the ground and miss, which at present strikes him as reasonable. Anyway, _fair_ is not a thing. It has never in his life been a thing. Justice is a bad joke, told by a guy who insists on overexplaining a bit that never worked in the first place. This is nothing more or less than what he should expect. You go through hell, you make it, you get killed by your own fucking people. Or the people who are currently passing for _your people_. Sure. Naturally.

Because that's what's happened. It's pretty goddamn obvious.

It is also so _cosmically_ unfair.

And her. Girl. She was standing right there when it happened. He's having difficulty judging distance with any reliability but he's pretty sure she was close. In spite of what should be a uniformly jaded outlook, he shudders. Distasteful. If she was near enough, his brain probably got on her, goopy pink flecks all over her pretty cherry red top. Brain and bloodspatter, chunks of bone, perhaps an eyeball or two flopping on the shorn end of an optic nerve; when someone’s head explodes, he can't conceive of that being a tidy business.

 _Sorry,_ he thinks. Grass stalks are poking the back of his neck and all down his spine. A twig is digging into his ass. It would be awesome if he could go ahead and die already; you really aren't supposed to be able to feel shit like that with no head. _Sorry. I'm sorry._ Echoing her? She was saying it when he got to her. She was also crying. He fucking hates that, and he's not even sure why. Can't stop it. Can't do anything but watch it as he dies.

_I'm sorry I got my brain all over your shirt. I'm sorry I made you cry—I'm not sure how I did that but I'm sorry anyway. I'm sorry for all those things he said about you. I swear I would've beaten his ass for it but he wasn't there._

_You don't think that's me, do you? It's not. It's not me._

_I'm not like that._

“Don’t worry.” Her voice, tear-choked and close, warm breath on his face. She was drinking lemonade, sometime recently. Her shampoo smells like apples. “Daryl, it's fine. It's okay. You're okay. No one said anythin’ about me.”

 _No, you stupid little airhead. You have no idea how wrong you are._ The desire to sit up and explain everything to her is nearly overwhelming. But words are impossible. Not for her, but he’s living half-phased into a dimension where they don't exist. Yet she can touch him; her hands on his face, delightfully cool. They cease to be delightful when her fingers graze his temple and his strangled cry fizzles out in a groan as he cringes away.

His temple. His face. He's in possession of both of those things, and he has sensory confirmation of the fact.

All right. Time to reevaluate the situation.

Light pulsing, first dim and then progressively brighter. No longer pulsing but pounding. Far too bright. His relationship with light today has not been the healthiest one. A breakup might be in order. Fuck light. He's done. Eyes closed forever now.

Footsteps like the echoes of an earthquake deep in the mantle. Many. Can't count how many, but many. “Beth, is he—?”

Rick? Sounds like Rick. Rick sounds freaked out.

Good. He wanted that before and he still wants it now.

“He's alive. I think it just grazed him.” Her hands are gone and even if they were problematic he wants them back because except for the temple they felt so good. That's nuts, he never feels that way about someone else's hands. He tries to reach for her but can hardly get his forearms up, let alone the whole limbs. “Hey, don’t—”

She's protesting. But then he can't hear her anymore. Shapes are moving across the thick murk of his vision, billowing like smoke. Drifting like low stormclouds across the sun. New hands on him, much rougher than hers, and he tries and fails to bat them away. His side whimpers and then wails at him as his arms are hooked across two broad sets of shoulders and he's hoisted to his feet.

His feet drag. Very briefly he considers attempting to help his rescuers out, then decides better of it. They can eat shit. He's finished with walking.

The world is a shoddy, poorly preserved Super 8 film strip. Instead of woodenly-acted shorts about patriotism and chlorophyll and how the commercial beef industry works, he's watching flickers of the evening sky, the rippling grass, the house in the distance all white and clean lifting itself above the rise like a second sun. The flowing green boughs of a willow. Rick’s face in profile, his stubbled jaw tight and a furtive look in his eyes.

Her hair. That's all. Adjectives are unnecessary. Extraneous. Unsuited to the job anyway.

_Her hair._

That's the last thing he sees before the film warps and bubbles and tears away into pure white as clean as the house. The last thing he hears is Glenn hiss: “He’s wearing _ears.”_

Last thing he feels is the leather thong yanked against his neck and snapping. _Hey,_ he thinks irritably. _Give that the fuck back. Get your own, I got mine fair and square._

Fair. Oh, man. He takes it back, the thing about the bad joke. This _is_ funny.

Oblivion.

~

She's trailing them as they carry him upstairs, and she wonders if she shouldn't be.

As far as she can tell, no one is aware of her. Andrea and Dale, T-Dog and Glenn—all of them were sharply ordered to stay outside as Rick and Shane dragged Daryl’s limp body through the front hall and and got him—none too gently, she thought—up the stairs. Following, trying to make herself small and blend into the shadows, she spotted Lori and Carol standing together in the kitchen doorway and watching, wide-eyed, Carol’s hand pressed over her mouth as if she was trying to muffle an oncoming cry.

Which is what turns her aside. The smooth appearance of intentionality, possibly, as if she never meant to follow the men up the stairs at all.

And she was also headed here anyway, sooner or later, because she knows who should receive the ragged, filthy doll she scooped out of the grass after Rick and Shane got Daryl up.

She reaches the kitchen, stops in front of Carol, gazes up at her. Carol drops her hand and yes: there is indeed a cry there. She managed to silence it, but Beth can see it all the same, if Carol’s throat and cheeks are translucent and a fat gray moth is beating itself against the insides of her.

Carol did it easily, she thinks. The silence pulled over like a blanket. As if she's accustomed to forcing herself to be quiet.

She's seeing so much these days, almost a preternatural amount, and it's so strange.

“He's alright,” Beth says quietly. Carol has lowered her hand from her face but it remains raised, hovering at chest level like she might not be done with it. Before considering the action, before bothering to worry about how it might be taken or whether it would be welcome, Beth is reaching out and laying her hand over Carol’s. Just placement, not squeezing, but she sees one of the taut bands wound around Carol’s shoulders loosen the smallest amount.

“Least,” she goes on, “I think he's gonna be. I don't think the bullet hurt him too bad. Daddy’ll take care of him.”

 _Daddy._ A shiver of darkness at the periphery of her vision, like a flitting ghost. _Sure he will._

Carol nods wordlessly. Tears are shining in her eyes, though not falling, and Beth wonders again what exactly Daryl said to her when he gave her the flower. Whether he said anything at all. Perhaps he merely handed it to her and left, without fanfare or comment. Perhaps something more.

So. Here's her part of this. It's wrong, she feels it twisting somewhere between her heart and her diaphragm, that he's not able to do it for himself. But _we've all got jobs to do,_ and sometimes you don't see those jobs coming until they're on you and thrusting themselves into your hands.

She holds out the doll. She's been carrying it carefully, as if it's something precious, because to someone it is. “He brought this back.”

Still without a word, Carol accepts the doll and looks down at it. With slow hands she turns it over and over again, running trembling fingers over the tangled yarn hair—blond gone to a dirty pale brown, close to gray. Her expression is completely unreadable, but those tears in her eyes are welling up, thickening lenses of moisture, until finally they overflow and trickle, twinned, down her cheeks.

From upstairs, shuffling feet. A clatter and a curse, as if someone's knocked something over, and a terse apology. Patricia saying something inaudible.

It's like the sound breaks something in her. She whirls, stumbles across the tile to the kitchen table, sinks into a chair and hunches over the doll in her lap, and begins to shake. Not crying, Beth thinks with odd remoteness. More like _bleeding._ The stitches in a wound have been torn and fresh pain is spilling out, and she can only do so much to contain it.

Lori sighs and Beth starts slightly. Lori. Right. Of course. She's there too. “Andrea shot him.”

Not a question. She confirms anyway. “Yeah. She thought he was a walker.”

Lori gives her a humorless smile. “Well, I didn't really think she would’ve shot him on purpose.”

“People keep gettin’ shot,” Beth murmurs. “We’re bein’ stupid.”  Her attention is wandering to the kitchen window, to the last of the daylight easing its way through. Evening light is like an exhalation in the moments before sleep, gradual and soft, and twilight its very end as the lungs fully empty before breath is taken again at dawn.

What if, after those hours of airless black, the next breath never came?

“Your daddy doesn't want anyone carrying guns.” Lori’s voice is heavy, tired. “If things like this are happening… I dunno. Maybe he's right.”

“No.” Beth’s focus whips back to her, sudden and angry despair once more beating at her breastbone. “No, that's not what I mean. We should have guns. _Everyone_ should have guns. We need to stop bein’ _stupid_.”

How the hell to explain what she means? How to begin? That it's not about the guns, and not about their presence. It's about the hands wielding them and the eyes aiming, about the minds and motivations behind those hands and eyes. All that NRA bull about how _guns don’t kill people, people kill people_ always struck her as precisely that—bull—but it might just be possible that they've stumbled into a world in which it’s also perfectly accurate.

Daryl didn't get shot because Andrea had a gun. Or technically yes, he did, in that otherwise she would have had nothing to shoot him with, but Andrea should have had that gun all the same.

“Was Otis being stupid when he shot my son?”

It doesn't have the delivery of a sentence intended to hurt. But that's the effect. Beth hisses in a breath and flinches, staring over at Lori—whose face is white and awful. Mortified. No, she didn't intend it to hurt. Not that way.

But she did intend to say it.

“I'm sorry,” Lori breathes, and ducks her head, her long dark hair hanging around her face like a curtain. She crosses an arm over her chest, pinches the bridge of her nose. “God, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I know. I know, Rick told me. It was just an accident.”

“Yeah. It was.” Flat. There's frankly not much else to say, nothing that could possibly give anyone any benefit. Beth looks past her at where Carol sits, bent and now motionless, cradling the doll. “How is he? Your son?”

“He’s, um.” Lori raises her head and combs her hair back with both hands, her face cautiously brightening—firmly, too, as though she's relieved by the chance to move on to happier subjects. But it's a mask. It's a mask… _and it's not the only one she's wearing, is it?_ “He's better. A lot better. He might be able to get up in a few days.”

Beth nods. “Good. I'm… I'm glad.”

And for another moment or two neither of them says anything. They simply look at each other, and then both look away a bit hurriedly, as if there's something more there that neither of them want to see. As if, on Lori’s part, that mask might begin to slip, and once one dislodges itself it might take another with it. An avalanche of truth, Beth thinks, watching the day release its breath, the shadows of the branches outside extending themselves through the window like the night itself is reaching in to stroke the house’s occupants. Once it begins, there's no stopping it, and there's no knowing where it might end.

The maintenance of a lie depends upon a clairvoyant’s knowledge of the future. It's why they always fail.

_And you didn't see this coming, either, did you? This is an interesting little wrinkle. You finally make up your mind to tell him and a couple of hours later he gets shot in the head._

_So what now?_

~

Awareness, when it comes, returns quickly. Annoyingly so. Perfect example of a situation in which you don't know what you've got until it's gone—unconsciousness can be such a wonderful thing. Benders, regardless of length and liquor content. Fights, no matter if won or lost. Things you said, things you did, which you regret upon the return of reason.

All of the above, all at once.

Moaning, and the sickening, abusive restoration of the light. Only this light turns out to be a little kinder, and presently he recognizes it as a lamp—antique porcelain, bluebirds in flight, and a shade filmed with a respectable layer of dust. The lamp is on a wooden table, the table is of the bedside variety, and that leads him to the discovery of the bed on which he's lying, the cracked plaster ceiling above him and the stationary blades of a fan like outstretched oars on a boat that could never sail except in circles. Window. Old lace curtains. The final gauzy hints of day.

Fuck’s sake, he said _no_ to the house and in the end they dragged him inside anyway.

Voices. Someone painfully manipulating his side, something else delightfully cool against his brow, and the rest of it comes to him. This also happens quickly, and in the end he's lying on his good side with his shirt off and trying very, very hard to not think about the fact that his shirt is off, trying so damn hard to ignore the fact that Hershel is there and looking at him and _touching_ him, for God’s sweet sake, and there's nothing he can do about it now, and he's trying to do those things by focusing on talking to Rick.

His head—now firmly bandaged—feels approximately ten times its proper size. The rest of him, he supposes, is doing about as well as it would be reasonable to expect. But focusing is fortunately something he's capable of.

It could be worse.

It could _always_ be worse.

Rick scoots the chair closer to the bed, leans forward and turns the doll over in his hands. Daryl flicks his eyes from it to Rick and back again. In the soft, warm light it looks less dirty than he recalls; Hershel has informed him that he was out for over an hour, so there must have been time to clean it up, and also must have been someone to do the cleaning.

He nods at the doll. “You pick that up?”

Rick shakes his head. “Carol gave it to me.”

He frowns. Carol. He doesn't remember her being there, though it's also pretty fucking remarkable that he remembers anything at all. But if she was…

Jesus, what did she see? What did _any_ of them see? How much did he say or do before Andrea took him out? How much of that sick little fantasy—oh, yes, that's one article of this whole wretched fever dream that he does retain with acidic clarity—did he make real? How much did he _show them?_ Rick is sitting here now looking and sounding perfectly bland, isn't treating Daryl like he regards him as a sideshow freak, but people act. People fake things. People lie. Shit, in his experience that's the majority of the time. Among _homo sapiens sapiens,_ truth is the exception.

How much did they see?

_He's wearing ears._

He swallows down a sudden rush of bile, and prays neither of the other men notice. If they do, hell, he's messed up. Bad. Easy to chalk it up to that.

But he wants to know. He forces his tone casual, the effect somewhat ruined by a hissed _fuck_ when Hershel gives him an especially deep jab in the meat with the needle.

“She down there too? When I showed up?”

“No. Beth spotted it when you dropped it, brought it up to the house. Gave it to her here.” Rick gives him a thin, sad smile. “Can't imagine that was easy for her to see. But it's something. Hell, it's the best lead we've had. Good job.”

He stares at Rick. Makes a Herculean effort not to gape at him. All at once he's floundering, thrown by a small collection of simple sentences into a deep end he hadn't known was there to be thrown into. Beth. Yes, she was there. Her face hovering over him, her hands on him so painful even as they proved his own life to him, and before that her standing in front of him, tear tracks shining on her cheeks, her wide blue eyes bright and stricken. She was saying she was sorry. He found that confusing, and she never answered him when he asked her why.

She was with him in the grass and then she was gone. After that, nothing.

Except the gilded gleam of her hair.

_He’s wearing ears._

His effort to suppress his own horrified groan is only mostly successful.

But this fucking cop is sitting there in his stupid fucking Smokey Bear uniform and telling him that he's done a _good job._ And Daryl is more than willing to believe that Rick Grimes is a liar, but if he is, he's a highly skilled one. Looking at him straight, not wavering, with that smile.

Daryl clears his throat and looks down at the red and brown and white concentric circles of the rug by the bed, the hardwood beyond—glowing, he assumes, with the polish of generations of feet. “Just happened to see it in the creekbed. Was in…” With a burst of rustly fumbling he unfolds and refolds his memory of the search grid map, squinting inwardly at it. “Southeast edge of the patch I took. Got lucky.”

 _Lucky_. He's a positive riot today. Should take this show on the road.

“Yeah, well, regardless.” Rick holds up the doll. “You think it got dropped near there?”

“Naw. It was a fuckin’ mess, had to have washed down from upstream. Probably not recent, neither.”

Not satisfied with being a comedian, he's also apparently become an optimist. Lord fucking almighty, he's tired.

“Mm. Even so, cuts the grid almost in half.” Rick gnaws at his lip, his gaze shifting for a second or two past and over Daryl to Hershel. “How’s he doing?”

Daryl cranes his neck to see over his shoulder without twisting his midsection more than necessary; Hershel’s expression is what, so far, he's always seen it to be, which is a mixture of faint sternness, faint pensiveness, and faint anxiety. Though under it, he thinks, he now glimpses faint exasperation. “I had no idea we'd be going through the antibiotics so quickly.” He turns that conglomerate expression on Daryl. “Any idea what happened to my horse?”

Aha, the horse. Not the author of this misadventure, but a sponsor, however unintentionally, and he's not feeling much more forgiving toward it than he was toward Merle. Also not especially sympathetic toward it for whatever it's gone through since the last time they saw each other. He scowls. “One that almost killed me? If it's smart, it left the country.”

Hershel almost snorts. It's a strange thing to hear someone almost do. “We call that one Nellie. As in _nervous Nellie_. I could've told you she'd throw you if you'd bothered to ask.” He tips his chin at Rick as he turns away, bending to rinse his surgical scissors in a basin of water on the other nightstand. “It's amazing you people have survived this long.”

Rick’s mouth quirks in something that might or might not be another smile. Rueful, if it is. Rueful even if not. Also not, as far as Daryl can tell, oriented toward argument. And why should he argue? What's there to argue with? Except the thing is, he reflects as he lays his throbbing head down and closes his eyes, retreats into the safer reddish darkness behind them, it's amazing that anyone has survived at all. He'd protest that he's not one of Rick’s _people,_ but true enough, he's survived where he shouldn't have. This afternoon. Other times. Before the world even ended, if it comes to that. Years upon years. Running wild in the deep dark woods, a feral child crouched over sullenly smoldering coals and eating nearly raw squirrel—he shouldn't have survived any of those long days. Those longer nights.

 _Your fucking daughter, old man. Your_ little girl _. She shouldn't be alive. But she is._

_She made it._

The last of the light recedes for a while, and with it the pain, and that's a good thing.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The concept of flying as "throwing yourself at the ground and missing" is taken from Douglas Adams's _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ universe. I agree that it's not at all the kind of thing Daryl would seek out but I'm amused by the idea of him bored and absently flipping through a dog-eared mass market paperback of it that he found lying around somewhere.


	17. we said it when we pushed away the shore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth settles down to a family dinner. Daryl convalesces. Nothing is as it appears, and nothing is as it should be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last piece of "Chupacabra". 
> 
> Ir's true that we're nearly at the MSF, for which I have Plans, as well as for what comes after, but I may slow down a bit after this in order to give Howl more of my attention, because there's a lot of shit about to go down in that fic (as I've been relentlessly hinting). Then again, who knows. I may use this to hide from all the shit in Howl that terrifies me, of which there is a not-inconsiderable amount. 
> 
> Regardless. Enjoy this last installment, and strap in for what's next.

There are very few things about her home life—at least before her home life disintegrated into the plot of a crappy horror movie—-that Beth has ever truly hated, but one of them has always been family dinners when someone has done something wrong and everyone is mad.

Especially Daddy. When Daddy is upset about something, it's like a thick, noxious fog descends, the output of some nearby factory that's suffered a catastrophic containment failure and the uncontrolled release of a corrosive gas. Invisible but heavy and grimy on her skin. Diffused by the space of a sizable farm on which there's always a great deal that needs doing, it’s bearable, but concentrated into a single room, over a single table, it's oppressive to the point of suffocation.

This time it's not a single table. It's two, one being insufficient, but that doesn't do much to ease anything. This time is also not like those times before in just about every other meaningful way; it's a horrible funhouse mirror of those unpleasant memories, with unfamiliar people and too many of them and two of the everpresent faces conspicuously absent, and a kind of helplessly cascading awkwardness in addition to Daddy’s sour mood, which is manifesting itself in deafening silence.

She sits between Maggie and Andrea, listening to the abnormally loud sounds of clinking silverware and plates, the _ting_ of glasses, sticky chewing and clicking teeth. The _glug_ as people swallow. For God’s sake, _breathing._ As quietly as she can, she forks roast garlic potatoes into her mouth and tries not to scream.

Glancing furtively around at all of them, she takes no relief in confirming that she has a significant amount of company in this particular boat. Across the table, Rick appears to be trying to think of something to say and growing increasingly frustrated by his failure, his brow furrowed and his knuckles pale with tension as he grips his knife. Shane looks as if he'd like to wriggle out of his skin and leave it rumpled in the chair, crawl back outside dressed only in his bare muscles. Further down the table, Carol is sitting with her head down, eating slowly; very likely not so much awkwardness as immersion in her own strained throughts.

And Andrea beside Beth. Of course they'd seat her next to Andrea. She feels no particular anger toward the woman, at least nothing hot and aggressive, but instead more of a cold, dull hopelessness. As she said, people are being stupid. Andrea was stupid today. This is an easy world to be stupid in, and the consequences of stupidity are far more terrible than they've ever been, and anger is useless anyway, but no fact is changed by this.

Andrea was stupid, and Daryl almost died. Now Beth has to eat dinner beside her and pretend that nothing happened. And in fact, Daddy’s mood isn't the only one contributing to the sense of oppression.

Nobody at any of these tables is happy.

 _We’re not a family,_ she thinks, prodding her string beans, grinding the scattered grains of salt against the eggshell colored china. _This is not a family dinner. This is a bunch of strangers who don't like each other, don't trust each other, and no one will come out and say it._

_And that's why people are going to keep getting shot._

A few more minutes. A few more bites of potato, which she doesn't taste. Then, like a sick reprise of earlier in the kitchen, she's muttering something akin to _‘scuse me_ and pushing her chair back from the table with a scraping so loud it almost hurts her eardrums, getting to her feet and heading for the hall without waiting to actually be excused.

Now Daddy will call to her, reproach her for her poor manners. Summon her back to await his permission as the head of this family that no longer exists.

But he doesn't.

In the front hall, at the foot of the stairs, she lays her hand on the worn knob of the banister and lowers her head, narrows her perception to her breathing. Rush in, flow out, counting in the way Shawn taught her when she was little. She was never the kind of girl who threw tantrums, but now and then she would be genuinely frightened by her own temper—magma surging up from some usually dormant core, seething and scorching through her and threatening to erupt into lava, flood down her sides and envelop small towns. Enraged at some playmate who had wronged her over something petty, at Mama or Daddy for some perceived injustice, at Maggie for treating her like some dumb little kid—God knows Shawn did more than his share of that too—and Shawn took her by the shoulders and told her to breathe. In, out. Repeat until the heat subsided and the volcano was sleeping. One couldn't precisely call his manner _patient_ when he did this, but he was tolerant of the fury-storms of a child, understanding so far as it went, and more important, he cared.

He cared so much.

So now she breathes, and listens to Glenn saying something about a guitar, and it's a little better.

His guitar, the one he had been toying with on the porch. Asking if anyone can play. She knows the name she’ll hear before she hears it, and her even breathing stutters.

Otis would play sitting on the porch steps on warm evenings with a glass of cold sweet tea sweating a dark circle on the wood beside him, and she and Maggie and Mama would sit with him and sing while Daddy sat in the rocker and listened. He loved doing that, loved using that to _put a lid on the day_ , as he said, and her eyes are burning with the tears she no longer has to cry with as she voicelessly mouths the words. 

> _I am a maid of constant sorrow_  
>  _I've seen trouble all my days_  
>  _I bid farewell to old Kentucky_  
>  _the place where I was born and raised_
> 
> _you can bury me in some deep valley_  
>  _for many years where I may lay_  
>  _then you may learn to love another_  
>  _while I am sleeping in my grave_

She realizes that she's climbing the stairs only after she's already climbed them. She never understood before the world fell apart how tenuous the linear quality of time can be, how easy it is to remember the future and imagine the past. She finally got it, staring at herself in the downstairs bathroom mirror and coming to the realization that she was no longer able to visually establish her own age, and now she gets it on an entirely different level—not only what she _is_ but what she _does_. So dangerous this is, because it means that yet another ragged shred of her ability to control her own actions has torn loose and is now flapping futilely in the wind spinning through her head.

God, she might do anything. Halfway down the hall she stops and braces herself against the wall, the faintly stippled texture of the wallpaper seeming to move under her fingers. The room they've put him in is at the end of the hall, the door slightly ajar and thin lamplight the color of aged honey spilling onto the floor outside. Silent in there, silent in a way the dining room wasn't. Not tense, kinetic potential, but the silence in which someone is sleeping, or half asleep, and occupying the air around them in only a passive way.

 _You're going to do it, then. You're going to do what you have to do. Your job, the task required of you, which you must do if you're ever going to call yourself brave. They won't understand,_ he _probably won't understand, but that's beyond you._

_Do it, and then, if you still believe in Him, leave the consequences in the hands of God._

_Even if you don't, the consequences sure as hell won't be in yours._

Pushing away from the wall, she takes another step and then another, her footfalls softened by the threadbare carpet runner. It's easier as she goes. It feels like falling. That injury sustained by the dare and the hayloft and the jump—when she landed, the pain was like an explosion the force of which rolled from her ankles up her legs and spine to expend itself in her chest as a glass-cracking scream that brought Mama and Maggie sprinting from the house, but in the seconds before that, it couldn't have been more different. The drop took forever; it was as though she arced outward rather than straight down, and she thought _oh my God, I might actually fly, I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming or maybe it can really happen, maybe everything is about to change._

It did change. What changed was her ability to walk unassisted, for about three weeks.

But before that, it had been so wonderfully _easy_. Not a thought needed for it. She let go of the wood and the dry, sweet hay under her doomed feet and she fell.

Falling toward the door now, and him. And will he hurt her? Will he cripple her?

Or will he catch her and bear her up?

Her hand on the door. It creaks as she nudges it open. It sounds like a screech, and for an dreadful split second she's convinced she's alerted the whole house to what she's doing. But there's no other sound, except for a smatter of unintelligible conversation from downstairs.

So she stands in the doorway, and she looks at him.

He's lying on his side on the bed beside the door, shirtless, turned away from her. She doubts he's actually gone so far as to _bathe,_ but from what she can see, he’s marginally cleaner, and doesn't smell half as bad as he did. His head is wrapped in bandages, the wound in his side taped up with a generous amount of gauze. The lamplight conceals almost more than it reveals, half drapes everything in shadow, but she can see enough of him.

She can see his back.

She looks at him for a while, unmoving.

This morning she was musing on the discomfiting truth: that she doesn't know her sister as well as she might. That she knows a hell of a lot less than she thought. Proceeding from that, a plausibility: that maybe it's not possible to ever know anyone. That people cover themselves in more than clothes, that there are things of which they never speak—she knew that already. But that it runs deeper than she ever suspected, that it goes down layer upon layer, a vertical landscape that remains unmapped and unmappable, a massive cave system lost in dancing shade and untrustworthy light.

She didn't even know herself, before. She didn't know what she could bear, what she could do.

Him? She doesn't know him. Or she does, but only to an extent, and odds are he’ll never let her know him the way she'd like to. She’ll never know him well enough to feel safe with him; not that he wouldn't keep her alive, she's pretty sure of that by now, but that she could lower the walls and unlock the gates, invite him inside, and he wouldn't break her—maybe without even meaning to.

He’s not her family, but he's the last person left in whom she thought she could find a friend.

So she goes in. She crosses the room, rounds the foot of the bed, lowers herself into the nearby chair and leans forward, touches his hand or his arm. He opens his eyes—of course his eyes aren't open—and he sees her, and instantly he knows she's seen him, and even if she never asks him about what happened to him and who hurt him so badly, even if she pretends she never saw anything, he’ll know that she did see and he’ll know that she wonders.

Because she does.

She does all of that. And she says, simply:

_My daddy is crazy and he thinks they're still people and he can still make them better somehow, and he has a bunch of them locked up in the barn, and my mama and my big brother are in there too and he won't let them be dead. Please help me, because I don't know what to do. I love him and I love Maggie and I'm so scared, and it hurts so bad, it feels like someone cut me up on the inside and they won't stop cutting, and I don't know what to do. I don't know how to make it stop. Please, please help me make it stop._

_Only don't fight with him too much. Don't hate him. He's a good man, he's just crazy. This is a world that makes people crazy and when people are crazy they make mistakes. It doesn't mean they're bad._

_Help. Help help help. Help me._

No. She doesn't do that.

She doesn't do any of it.

What she does is turn around and walk out the door, closing it behind her as quietly as she can, carefully measuring the angle to her best recollection of how wide it was before she touched it. What she does is tiptoe back down the hall to her room and slip inside, and shut the door behind her just as quietly. What she does is take her boots off and climb into bed with her clothes on and lie there in the dark, staring at nothing, feeling nothing, hearing nothing except a voice that sounds not like Mama or Shawn or even _him,_ but Karen, dead Karen with her dead baby, who went to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta to have that baby because she was never supposed to be pregnant in the first place and she was too afraid to have it in her own hometown, because people talk and words do break someone even worse than sticks and stones in their way. Dead Karen, whispering to her from beneath her pillow.

_You goddamned coward._

_You're weak too._

_~_

By the time he's fully awake, that sense of presence has receded, and he figures he was dreaming.

And even if he wasn't, it's better to go with the idea that he was.

For a long time he remains where he is, conscious but motionless, gazing at the wall. Framed painting near the window, the subject matter of which he can't make out. Plain whitewash beneath and around. The large, vaguely hulking wardrobe directly opposite him, dark old wood like so many of the furnishings in this house—cherry? Mahogany? No idea; could be either or indeed anything else. He can identify a tree at a considerable distance and scarcely a glance but when it comes to furniture he's lost.

In any case, it's dark. The shadows in the room seem to cluster around it, and he's abruptly overwhelmed with the unsettling suspicion that something might crack one of the doors open from the inside, snake out a set of long fingers and curl them around the edge of that cherry-mahogany-whatever door, and peer at him with gleaming disembodied eyes.

He pulls in a breath. He's still messed up. Still messed up, and his mind is full of creepy-crawlies, because that's the nature of the world these days.

Same thing that made him think there was someone else in the room with him just now.

Sound of footsteps in the hall, coming toward him; their source is doing what they can to keep it down but not in any way that indicates stealth as an ultimate aim. They don't care if he knows they're coming, which is an argument for them not being only a product of his own rattled brain.

He can't decide whether or not that's reassuring.

They reach him. Pause. The door creaks open and once more there's the sense of presence, of someone displacing air to clear a path for their body. He hears indrawn breath, the germ of a voice seeded within it, and in the three seconds between the tray being set down on the nightstand behind him and the first word, he knows who it is and he pulls the sheet higher and tighter around himself, biting back a curse behind clenched teeth.

So many reasons he doesn't want to see her right now.

“How're you feeling?”

Against his better judgment and all his instincts, he hazards a glance over his shoulder. Her face in the lamplight, worn and tired—close to exhausted in a way he hates, because he knows it in his fucking bones. But she's not tense, though she's hesitant. As on the road when he first saw her, her back is slightly bent, but her mouth is relaxed and her eyes are soft. A hint of red lines them; she's definitely been crying, though not recently.

Beth gave her the doll.

Suddenly, fiercely, _horribly_ , he's grateful that it didn't have to be him. Better to give her a flower and tell her a story. Better to give her some hope of a relatively neutral variety, some removal from it, rather than a relic ripped from her living chest and presented to her like a perverse gift. Stories give you room to breathe. Stories make it better, because if it happened to someone else, it means you'll be fine. Means you _are_ fine.

There's no story he can tell her about that doll. Nothing that he believes could comfort her.

But she asked him a question. He ought to answer. He grunts, rolls back over and pulls the sheet a little higher still.

“Not as good as I look.”

Flippancy is a shitty defense, but currently, aside from a sheet, it's what he has.

“Brought you some dinner. You must be starving.”

Pause. And then she does it. She just straight up fucking drop-kicks him out the window. Refs in striped jerseys down there on the lawn, raising both arms in the universal signal for _GOOD._ What he did to deserve it, he hasn't the remotest goddamn idea, and when her lips graze his temple every muscle in his body knots itself around every other muscle and he's seriously uncertain about whether he'll ever be able to move again.

Shit, she doesn't even have to kick him. He'd leap out of bed, jump out the window his own damn self—hurl his battered body into the dark in a glittering shower of glass. It's that bad. It's that—

No. Not bad. That's not what it is.

He has no fucking clue what it is.

Somehow— _Lord alive and praise Jaysus, he's healed, it's a gen-u-ine fucking miracle_ —he _is_ moving, once more gingerly twisting to look at her. She's standing over him with an expression on her face as bewildering as any of the rest of this. It's not unlike how she looked when he gave her the rose but it's also not the same, and he tries to swallow and has no moisture to do it with.

He does say something—mutters it—which by now he ought to know that he really should never do, because it's always the most asinine thing he can think of.

“Watch them stitches.”

The corners of her mouth simply curl upward, and, mercy of mercies, she turns and lays a hand on the door. But then suddenly she stops, and her gentle, weary gaze returns to him.

“You need to know something.” Again that curl of her lips, only there's a crooked quality to it, and he'd swear that the shine in her eyes is brighter. “You did more for my little girl today than her own daddy ever did for her in his whole life.”

In a purely technical sense, since he met her a couple of days ago she's told him almost nothing. And every time he sees her, she tells him more, and every part of it is like someone holding up a mirror, and it's terrible.

She has no right to say these things to him.

Back to the wall. The wardrobe. Whatever fiendish little imps lurk inside it, like the exiles of some far less charming Narnia. “I didn't do anythin’ the rest of ‘em wouldn't have done.”

“I know,” she murmurs. “You're every bit as good as any of them. Every bit.”

Gone.

For a while all he can do is breathe, and even that isn't going quite as well as it might. His side is aching and his head is throbbing again, and along with both is washing in the first fresh waves of nausea, making the thought of _dinner_ about as attractive as another wallow in cold creek mud, even if his stomach does feel as if it's on the verge of beginning to consume its neighbor organs. But all of that is abruptly only background when the shadows in the corners of the room and gathered around the wardrobe coalesce and accrete into a familiar form sitting hunched in the chair by the bed.

He stares at it as it takes shape and feature. Wiry muscle. Stubbled head and jaw. Face five times as worn as Carol’s, with hard, mean eyes and a mouth like a bar brawl knife’s slash. Scars.

God, so many scars.

Merle looks at him in silence. Not even a discernible emotion in the arrangement of those craggy features. No cruel amusement, no nasty grin, no mocking. No searching him for a weak point, a place to strike that'll crack him open all over again. All the same, this is where he'll jump right back into it. _Little girls_ and all the weapons that phrase furnishes him with, coming up with the ugliest shit he can think of and fashioning it into the verbal version of an ice pick to the skull.

Daryl left him. Walked away. _Rode_ away on Merle’s own fucking bike, girl clinging to his waist from behind. Warm, small pressure, making according adjustments in the handling of the thing. Had it felt good, leaving with her that way?

No. It felt fucking horrible. Every mile was like a tooth extracted without novocaine. Back there in a burned-out dead city, his wounded brother—all alone and maybe sick, maybe dying, while his faithless little brother and a _little girl_ get out of dodge.

He looks at Merle and chews the insides of his cheeks, waiting.

But nothing comes. Merle simply gazes at him in silence, face impassive.

“I'm sorry, man,” Daryl whispers. “I'm sorry it went down the way it did. Ain't right.”

Still nothing. And after a while, the shadows that compose him unravel themselves, and they fade back into their places and lie still. The chair is empty. The room is empty, but for him. Downstairs he can still hear voices, but only a couple. Running water, plates. Cleaning up. The party dispersing.

He didn't break bread with them tonight. But not for the reason he ever would have anticipated.

Eventually, once the nausea has gone the way of Merle, he sits up and pokes at the contents of the tray. Eats some of it. Although it's cold, it's not bad.

_Shitty day, bro._

Yeah, it was. But it could have been worse.

He sleeps.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Beth is singing is "Man of Constant Sorrow", an old folk song written by Dick Burnett. Goes without saying that my favorite version is [the one from O Brother Where Art Thou.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=HH8AqsiF_rs)


	18. you’re putting a line where there should be not a line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes things fall apart all at once. And sometimes they fall apart in stages, and take everyone down with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes hello I’m still here I JUST HAVE FIFTY WIPS AND A NOVEL AND A PODCAST AND A DOCTORAL DISSERTATION GOING SIMULTANEOUSLY at the moment.
> 
> I do have the next chapter planned, though - this is roughly “Secrets”, whereas the next one will be the MSF. So hopefully it won’t take me too long to write. 
> 
> Anyway, if you’re still here and having a good time, let me know. ❤️

She’s finishing up a breakfast she hardly tastes and carrying her dishes to the kitchen sink when Maggie grabs her and hauls her toward the back door.

Not especially rough, certainly not painful, but firm, and there's a worried urgency in Maggie’s movements and in the grip on Beth’s forearm that has her going along without protest. It's still early, and as they step onto the slimmer section of porch behind the house it's quiet except for the distant clucking of the chickens in their coop, the trill of a wood thrush in a nearby tree, and the low murmur of the camp in the front yard as it begins to stir.

Peaceful, she would have said once. And indeed even now, it is.

Maggie moves to the railing, folds her arms, and turns, and before she speaks, the pinched tension of her features makes it clear enough what she's going to say.

So telling Daryl is a moot point, then. Beth hasn't the first clue whether or not that's a relief.

“Glenn knows.”

No need to specify what it is that he knows about. Beth swallows and ducks her head in a single nod, releasing a breath.

“How'd he find out?”

Maggie’s mouth twists, something hopelessly lost between irritation and dark amusement. _She really likes him,_ Beth thinks. _God, she really does._ “He was gonna meet me in the hayloft. I guess this… stupid bullshit idea about how _a farm girl’d do it._ ” Maybe stupid bullshit, but not, going by either of the Greene daughters’ experiences, incorrect. “He went up there before I could get to him to stop him. So he knows.”

“He tell the others yet?”

“Not yet.” Maggie sighs and rakes a hand through her hair, glances over her shoulder as if she expects to see someone there listening, instead of an empty field and the low, tree-covered hills beyond. “I couldn't get him to promise he wouldn't, either. I just.” She falls silent and drops both hands, looking at Beth as if she's reached the end of this whole exercise—and Beth looks back with anger rising sudden and hot in her chest.

Not all of that anger is directed outward.

“What the hell d’you think I can do about that?”

“I don't know.” Maggie turns—practically whirls—and braces herself on the railing, her shoulders slumped. “ _Shit,_ it's so fucked up.”

Barely a week ago, she would have been shocked to hear such language coming out of her sister’s mouth. Now she listens to it with cold placidity and it rolls over her without shaking her, not least because it's a perfectly accurate description of the situation. Has been since she got home. Was before that. It's all _fucked up,_ and she can see no way in which it can currently be un-fucked.

Whether or not Glenn does tell the others is probably, in the end, inconsequential.

“He's your boyfriend,” she says quietly. “You can't get a handle on him?”

Maggie doesn't move. She blinks. But in that blink she's recoiling, clearly stung, and Beth feels a pang of awful satisfaction. She hadn't intended the words to hurt, but now that she's seen them do so, she isn't feeling much regret. Because why _is_ Maggie putting this on her? What _is_ she expecting? For Beth to charge into the camp and find Glenn and seize him by the ear, demand that he keep his mouth shut? Fall to her knees in front of him and clasp her hands in prayer-like attitude and beg him?

What is Beth supposed to do in this moment except stand here and be angry?

“He's not my boyfriend,” Maggie says softly. “It ain't like that.”

“Tell that to Daddy.”

“I _did,_ ” Maggie hisses, and for a second Beth thinks she might actually pull back and slap her. But instead Maggie heaves another sigh, her face twisting, and Beth is mildly surprised to see unshed tears shining in her eyes.

And should she be surprised?

How much crying has Maggie actually done over this?

“Does Daddy know?” Beth's voice is a bit gentler now, pitched lower. Correspondingly the talk in the camp rises, and she can make out Daryl’s rough grunt. Out of bed, then, and able to get down the stairs. 

Good. She guesses.

Maggie shakes her head. “Not yet. I guess I gotta spill it to him. Don't I?”

Beth shrugs. Yes, she guesses that too. But she's also oddly unable to envision how the rest of this might unfold. As imagination goes, it's a black box that she can't seem to open, can’t even find the seam of the lid. She had no say in it up until now, and that won't change; whatever happens after this, she'll observe it as a bystander, unable to affect its course by herself any more than she could alter a river.

_Only you don't have to be by yourself, do you?_

_It's not too late. You could still tell him._

“I've been wantin’ to tell Daryl,” she murmurs, and this time her satisfaction is thin and watery as shock blooms on Maggie’s face. She hadn't meant to say it, but what the hell. While they're both sharing, while they're engaging in this level of painful honesty. After all, everything is fucked up, so why hold back? “I haven't figured out how.”

“You—” Maggie cuts herself off, her lips moving soundlessly. The struggle to comprehend is obvious. Probably not fair to blame her for it, because Beth is self-aware enough to see the difference here. Glenn seems sweet and straightforward, no guile in him that Beth has been able to discern since she met him, whereas Daryl is…

No guile in him either, though, if it comes to that. Not that Beth has seen. He's gruff, crass, even capable of being truly cruel, but sly? Manipulative? No. Nothing like that.

If anything, if nothing else, there's a refreshing honesty in his blunt tactlessness.

“ _Why?_ ” Maggie appears to have recovered enough to form her shock into words. “Why would you… Beth, why would you tell _him?_ Look, who the hell even _is_ he?”

“He's a man,” she says simply, rolling a shoulder. Not much else to say. “He helped me. He's not crazy. He wants to stay alive.” She pauses takes a breath and pushes ahead. “I trust him.”

Not to refrain from hurting her—never with his hands, or she really doesn't think so, but he's already proved more than willing to hit out at her with his words. But to be straight with her? To mean what he says and say nothing he doesn't mean? To not be stupid and selfish, to not get them all killed?

Yes. She trusts him with those things, and she's beginning to believe those might be the only things that matter anymore.

“What happened out there?” Maggie crosses her arms again, studying Beth with narrowed eyes, and something chilly begins to crawl up Beth’s spine. “With you and him? Don't bullshit me.”

“Nothin’ happened.” She knew they were heading into this territory, sooner or later. Knew and didn't want to know, and once more she thinks of the difference between Daryl and Glenn, the purely cosmetic and the elements that run deeper. “I told you, he helped me. He got me home. That's it.” And? “And he’s never lied to me, Maggie. He's never tried to sell me on anythin’. He can be a jerk, but he's not some creep.”

“And he's got a motorcycle with _Nazi_ crap on it.”

Her jaw tightens. This is, if she's frank, starting to feel way too much like she's defending some bad boy she's fallen for and brought home. “He's not a Nazi. It's his brother’s bike.”

Maggie rolls her eyes. “Oh, so his brother’s a Nazi. My mistake, that's completely different.”

“So _what_ if I told him?” All at once she's stomping forward, her hands clenched into fists as if she intends to start swinging them. “So what if I did that? What would you and Daddy do? Kick me out of the damn house?” She bares her teeth. “Beat me?”

The blood drains from Maggie’s face. With numb horror Beth watches it go, the flush in Maggie’s cheeks fading rapidly to deathly pale, and she replays the words in her head. Too far. Even she would admit that was too far. There is still such a thing as _too far,_ and she just found the line, and it's too late to step back over it.

Thank God she didn't say it to Daddy. Thank God for that, at least.

“I'm sorry,” she whispers, but Maggie doesn't let her get the second word out. She's on so when Maggie’s hand snaps back, a white blur in the shade of the porch roof, and smacks into her cheek, whipping her head to the side so hard she bites down on her tongue.

Everything stops dead. Even the thrush is silent. She’s frozen, neck still twisted and her face blazing from numbness to tingling fire, as she lifts a trembling hand and touches the corner of her mouth, and examines her fingertips.

Smear of red. She moves her tongue and the pain flares, and she finally turns and stares at Maggie with watering eyes.

Her sister has never slapped her.

No one in this family has ever slapped her. No matter how much of a horrid little brat she was being—and _horrid little brat_ was a role she perfected in her time. No one has ever done it. No one.

Daddy has never been overly strict, though he's always laid down his share of rules. But there are three things absolutely forbidden in the home he’s made: You don't drink, you don't blaspheme, and you don't strike.

Ever.

_And only yesterday, you were thinking about doing this. You know you were. So how about it? How about now?_

Like a startled bird, Maggie’s hand flutters to her mouth as she gasps. Her eyes are wide, her face even paler than before, and Beth finds that she feels nothing at all as she looks back. Not even pain—not really. It's there, but it's as if it's happening to someone else, and the numbness with which she's been living over the last few days is descending, muffling everything like a thick gray curtain.

“Beth.”

“Don't.” She's stumbling, half tear-blind, past Maggie and toward the steps, groping clumsily at the railing. The sun strikes her in the face all over again, hot even though it's not yet high, and her tears finally overflow her lids and spill down her face. She’s burning from the inside out, and they should be rising from her skin like steam.

“ _Beth_.”

Maggie sounds stricken. Beth’s boots hit the grass and she doesn't turn, wiping furiously at her eyes as she almost breaks into a run. She's not even sure where she's going. Away; that's all she can process. Away from Maggie, from Daddy, from the house, and from the camp.

From the barn.

Vaguely, she's considering what it might be like if she just never goes back.

~

Daryl looks down from Andrea’s receding back at the book she's brought him.

He recognizes it for what it is: a peace offering. He’s happy to accept it, because lying in someone else’s tent and waiting to stop hurting quite so much is boring as shit, but he meant what he told her. It wasn't expected, and he doesn't need it. It's not as though he's inclined to sympathy where someone shooting him in the head is concerned, but as to what she was doing…

Yeah, he can see himself doing the same. Fucking up like that. Hell, he can only imagine how he looked, staggering out of the trees caked in mud and gore.

Would be nice to find out what happened to the fucking ears. He hasn't yet figured out how to pose that question, or who to pose it to.

If it's even worth asking.

He sighs, shifts uncomfortably on the rumpled sleeping bag, turns the paperback over in his hands and examines the creased cover. _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ —one he's actually read start to finish, although, though his intention and neglect, no one ever knew. Not even the teacher who assigned it to him, because naturally he never wrote the book report on it. Never meant to do so. That he wouldn't do the work was never in doubt on the part of anyone. He knew his place and he kept it.

Just another poor white trash kid, as dumb as he was lazy, come from nowhere and headed to the same damn place.

Did like the book, though. He remembers that. Rereading it isn't an unbearable prospect, especially if he's not doing much of anything else. Especially if he's trying to be smart about this, trying not to shove himself to his feet and saddle up again, head back out there and keep looking.

Getting himself killed isn't going to get the girl found any quicker.

He opens the book to a random page, tracing down the lines.

> _It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened—Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many._

“Hey.”

He drops the book flat onto his chest and peers up at the tent flap, blinking in the high mid-morning sun. Even without a good look at the face, and without the hat, he knows the form and the voice by now. _Officer Friendly,_ and the ripple of annoyance he feels is so slight it might as well not be here.

He grunts, nods. Rick, appearing to take that as an invitation to sit a spell, lowers into a crouch, leaning on his knees and scanning Daryl over.

“You're looking better.”

Daryl shoots him a wry smile. “Ain't a high bar to clear.”

Rick breathes a laugh. “No, I suppose not. Still, though. Considering you got shot in the head.”

“Yeah, well.” He lifts his chin in the direction of the house. “Seems like gettin’ shot is kinda what you do around here. How's your boy?”

“He's, uh.” The line Rick’s mouth pulls into what might be his own smile, but it's a bit too tired, a bit too strained. “He's doing good. He's actually out of bed today, out there having some breakfast. His mom wanted to make him stay down another day, but Hershel said it'd be fine if he takes it easy, and anyway.” He sighs. “Getting tough to make him do anything.”

More of an answer than he was asking for, or expected. But it's interesting. He watches Rick, close but as unobtrusive as he can be, and considers what's behind the words—which might have very little to do with the words themselves.

There's a lot more here. There's something on his mind, and it's weighing him down.

That also seems to be a trend where this place is concerned.

“How much longer you’n your people stickin’ around?”

“Yeah, that's—” Rick glances over his shoulder. “I dunno. That's something I'm gonna have to see about.”

Aha. “You don't wanna go back out there.”

“Would you?”

A fair question—but not one with an answer Rick might be looking for. Because there's a nice house and respectable religion and _sivilizing,_ but then there's the raft, the open sky and more stars than could ever be made, and even if that world out there now belongs to the dead, the road at least is one he knows better than not being on the road at all. He thinks about the bike, parked in the shelter of one of those ancient oaks, and every part of him breaks into a kind of longing itch.

He thinks about the brother he left behind, and he feels distantly sick.

Rick gazes at him in impassive silence for another moment or two, then pushes to his feet and steps back, one hand on the flap. “Anyway, I'll leave you alone. You take it easy too.”

“Y’all gonna keep lookin’?”

“Yeah. We’re heading out soon as we get everyone organized.” Rick pauses, and the tug at the corner of his mouth is a bit less strained. “Like I said last night… Using what you got us, we can get a tighter focus. Be more efficient. You might end up getting her found after all, even if you didn't bring her back yourself.”

Grunt. He glances away; he only remembers fragments of last night, but he does remember Rick saying something along these lines, and it wasn't precisely comfortable then, either, even if he had myriad and diverse reasons to be uncomfortable. Even if he does now. He just did a thing. And he was a dumbass and he almost got himself killed, and one doesn't exactly deserve congratulations for that.

Rick lingers another couple of seconds, then gives him a final nod and backs out. But before he can fully retreat, something plucks at Daryl’s attention.

“Hey, you tell that Chinese kid I said thanks for the tent?”

Rick half turns. “I think he's Korean.”

Daryl shrugs. This seems like an extremely unimportant detail located around a largely meaningless distinction. “Whatever.”

He stays where he is for a moment or two after Rick departs, gazing up at the mesh top of the tent with unfocused eyes. It sucks to stay here. It fucking sucks to take it easy. It sucks to not be up and moving, to be _useless,_ when there are any number of things he could and should be doing.

But if the hell he put himself through yesterday ends up being worth anything…

Well. That's something.

He opens the book and begins to read.

> _After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more about him, because I don’t take no stock in dead people._

Wise. One probably shouldn't.

~

The rest of the time is a blur until she hears the nicker and it all snaps back into focus.

She's sitting in the middle of a sea of golden grass that rises nearly to the level of her head, swaying gently and providing what she guesses she would consider some meager protection from the sun. But the sun is powerful all the same, and in a detached kind of way she’s wishing she brought a hat. Mama’s hat, pale straw with a floppy brim, big silk pink and purple daisies woven around the band. Kind of a silly hat, in truth, and Shawn always used to tease her about it, which Mama took with laughing good humor.

She loved that hat, Mama did. Only now does Beth realize she did as well.

It's hanging up by the back door now, beside her old gardening gloves. Who's going to wear it? Who’s going to wear either of those things? Maybe she can bury them. If she won't be allowed to give Mama a funeral, maybe she can take the gloves and the hat and bury them by the rose bushes, and if Maggie or Daddy give her crap for it she can tell them to go straight to hell.

She swipes at her face, and then she hears the nicker again, and her head jerks up and she understands it for what it is.

Soft, steady thump of hooves still at a distance. She scrambles to her feet, shading her eyes—the sun is high, though well past its zenith and descending into afternoon. Across the stretch of field, she spies a glossy brown back moving toward her from the direction of the woods, the toss of a dark mane, and she breaks into a pained smile.

This is something, anyway.

She walks, then jogs down the slight incline to greet the horse coming up to her. Nellie’s reins are dangling and tangled, her flanks shining with sweat and a few burrs in her tail, but otherwise she looks well enough, and Beth murmurs as she reaches for the horse’s bridle, passing a soothing hand across her neck. Another nicker, and Nellie butts her nose against Beth’s hand, and Beth’s smile is a little less pained.

She’s been worrying about Nellie. Hadn't really taken the time to dwell on it, but she has. Nellie has her quirks, but she's always done right by Beth, as Beth’s always tried to do right by her, and the idea that she might be lost out there forever…

No. Of course she'd find her way back.

“There, girl,” she breathes, giving her another stroke. “Alright, good girl. You’re alright. You wanna go home?” Nellie snorts, which Beth takes for hearty and somewhat exasperated agreement. “I know, he's a jerk. I don't think he meant anythin’ by it, though. He was tryin’ to help.” She gives the bridle a gentle tug. “C’mon, I'll rub you down when we get you back.”

A rubdown, maybe an apple. She can do these things, at least. She can make this tiny corner of the world better, even if she can't touch the rest of it—or can't touch it without making it worse. Maybe, in the course of taking care of these chores, some solutions might even reveal themselves.

That's idiocy. She knows better. She’s not a fool, and she's not a child.

Not anymore.

She sighs, turns, and begins to lead Nellie back up the slope toward the paddock.

~

The path to the paddock takes her between the camp and the house, and as she approaches it, she slows, her stomach flopping over and her throat tightening. She could go around behind the house, avoid all the multiple layers of awkwardness she knows she'll have to travel through, the sets of eyes she’ll potentially have to avoid meeting—but even as she's slowing, she's not stopping, Nellie plodding along behind her and the cluster of oaks ahead, the thick branch that used to support the tire swing Shawn hung for the both of them one summer when she was still of an age to get fantastically enthusiastic about tire swings and he was enthused by her enthusiasm—the trunk against which she used to sit and eat the lunch Mama made for her on hot days like this one after a morning of chores, and her throat is suddenly so tight she can scarcely breathe.

This place is full of ghosts. Choked by them. Inside and out, every square foot of the house, every corner of every room, and outside every tree and field, the garden, the cows and horses and hens, every beam of sun. Every moment. It's all haunted. She’s haunted.

She can't do this anymore.

Abruptly she picks up the pace, mumbling a summons to Nellie and hurrying forward with her head down and loose strands of her hair hanging in her face. The rest of it is still bound up in her braid, but that's fallen over her shoulder and the name of her neck is bare, and all at once it feels like every particle of that aggressive sunlight is slamming onto a six inch square patch of skin.

Like the attention of an enormous and profoundly judgmental eye.

 _Glenn knows_. How many of the others do by now? Or is he simply carrying that knowledge around, holding onto it like the rest of the family, waiting for the weight to collapse him?

That's it. She arrives at the conclusion with a plain finality that was absent last night and this morning. That's it. She can't do it anymore, so she won't. Screw it. Fuck it. Her eyes are watering and she scrubs one-handed at them, only succeeds in rubbing her sweat into the corners and making them sting even more. But it doesn't matter.

She's going to put Nellie in her stall, and then she's going to come back and tell him.

Somehow.

She's almost past the camp when she chances a look up and sees him, seated by the fire in a lawn chair with a half eaten plate of what looks like baked beans in his lap. He goes still, spoon halfway to his mouth as his gaze lands on hers.

She looks quickly away.

She's past. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Glenn getting to his feet, feels a prickle of disquiet, and then they're all out of her view and she's fixing her eyes on the low, mossy roof of her destination, mere yards ahead.

One step. Then another. She'll go to him, take him aside, and find the words. Find a way.

Surely she can do it. Surely she's been through much worse.

_Not worse than what you're going through every day._

But she's just closing Nellie’s stall and turning to put away the saddle when she sees him standing there, half in sun and half in shadow, and by the look on his face she knows instantly that she's too late.

Then he speaks, and she knows it for dead certain.

“You _knew?_ ”

~

He doesn't follow the question up with anything else. Not immediately. He stands there, arm curled around his middle and helping to support his side, and every ounce of the pain he's feeling is transmuted into pure fury as he stares at her, his jaw grinding and his teeth working at his lips.

It's possible, he'd have to grant, that she didn't know. But only remotely. She knew. The stupid girl knew. Had to.

But she doesn't look abashed. She doesn't look frightened, or shocked, or any species of mortified. She doesn't look confused. She doesn't look ashamed. She doesn't even look angry. She looks, in short, nothing like what he would expect from someone who's either been caught in a lie—even a lie of omission—or accused of something they had no part in.

She looks as if she believed this was coming.

She looks almost _relieved_.

Releasing a long breath, she lowers the saddle in her hands and sets it back where it was, leans it against the stall and straightens. After the brilliance of the sunshine it's dim in here, but he can make her out clearly enough, and he doesn't miss the weariness that sweeps in to cover that awful, weird relief.

And he thinks about every single time he's seen her since they got here. Her eyes. What he saw in them, and what he was never able to pin down or define. That unspoken thing pressing so hard against her skin that it seemed on the verge of tearing off her flesh, and now it all makes so much sense.

Yes, she knew. Miserably.

Maybe later he'll feel sorry for her. Now there's just the fury. He takes a step forward, biting back his wince as a pang shoots from the wound through his core and his head gives a single groaning throb. “You knew it. You _knew_ they was all in there.” He gestures at the wall, the barn beyond it. “Yards away from the fuckin’ camp, and you didn't say _nothin’?_ ”

It doesn’t altogether track, some more elevated part of himself notes, that he should feel such a degree of betrayal about this. She never promised him anything. They didn't swear any kind of oath to each other. Yet betrayal is there, pounding fierce and hot as his side. The others? Her sister, her father, and Otis’s wife? He doesn't know them. He would have expected nothing from them.

But her?

“They never asked me about it,” she says simply, with an awful flat calmness to match her affect, and it takes him a second or two to suss out what she's even referring to. “Daddy. Maggie. They never asked what I thought, what I wanted. They were already in the barn when I got here. I had to find out that way.”

“And then you just sat your ass down on it. Let everyone sleep that close to a fuckin’ barn full of walkers, figured it'd all just work out in the end?”

“I've been sleepin’ close to ‘em too, Daryl.”

“You been sleepin’ in a fuckin’ _house_. You got walls and doors. Everybody out there, they still in tents and shit, and now they got a kid with ‘em. That place busts open in the middle of the night and them things come spillin’ out, everybody here's walker chow while you tucked all safe in bed. You think about that at all, you dumb bitch?”

She blinks at the last word, the first time something he's said has appeared to make a real impact, and even as it all continues to tumble out of him like a flurry of blows, he'd swear her left cheek is redder than her right. Redder, and a little puffy. But it doesn't matter. To him, to the rage, it doesn't matter.

“I was thinkin’ about it,” she says softly. “I couldn't stop thinkin’ about it.”

“And you didn't say _shit,_ ” he hisses, his boots breaking a couple thick pieces of straw with a strangely loud snap as he takes another step closer. The twitch of her shoulders is almost imperceptible, but he doesn't miss it. Part of him can't stop noting these miniscule things about her, her body and her face and her eyes, everything beneath and behind, and it continues to make absolutely no difference where what’s genuinely becoming an assault on her is concerned. “You're totally crazy, you know that? Your dad, your sister, that other bitch, you are outta your fuckin’ _minds_. Hell.” He gestures again in a violent whip of his arm and half turns, close to stalking, ignoring another surge of pain. “We _should_ bust that thing open. Put y’all right there in front, break them doors off the damn hinges, let ‘em tear y’all apart. Make the whole damn world a safer place.”

It's getting worse, that pain. Deeper. He's biting back something denser and more oppressive than a wince, than even a cry. It's cold and solid at the base of his throat like he's swallowed a stone, and suddenly he can't even look at her.

Dragged her out of Atlanta. Dragged her all over it before that… and she let him drag her. And sure, she was trying to stay alive the same as anyone, but even so.

She was straight with him. She didn't lie to him. Didn't fuck him over. Held up her end, when the rest of everything was falling down around their ears. When even his own damn brother was gone.

Now this.

“I wanted to tell you,” she whispers. “I swear I did. I was tryin’.” Click as she swallows, and there's a watery center to her voice now, spreading outward and quivering its edges. “I was gonna do it yesterday, but. Well.”

“I wasn't in a fuckin’ _coma,_ ” he snarls, finally spinning back to her with his head lowered, like he might charge. “And you had all day today. Were you ever gonna say somethin’? Was that ever gonna happen?”

“I was comin’ to tell you just now,” she says, and pulls in a shuddering breath. “I guess… I guess Glenn got to it before I did. I'm sorry.”

Far from pacifying him, the apology only stokes the fire hotter, and he bares his teeth as he just about spits the words at her. “Oh, no. Don't you fuckin’ try to sell me on that. You're a liar. You're a liar and you're an _idiot,_ and I shoulda _left you in that fuckin’ hospital._ ”

“My mama and my big brother are in there,” she says, so soft and so dry he hardly makes it out at all, and he recoils as if she's the one who's slapped him.

 _Oh_.

He gazes at her in silence, all his words blown away by that gust of information, and into that space she forges her weak, shaky way ahead. “I never got to say goodbye to them. I come home and they're just… they're dead. Only Daddy won’t let them die.” She actually lets out a sound that might be a laugh, ragged and tear-choked, and those tears are trickling down her cheeks.

That left one, redder than the right.

“I can't make him see it. I tried. He thinks they're just sick, and he can still help them. I can't make him let go.” She spreads her hands helplessly. “What if it was your brother in there? What would you do?”

 _No._ Everything in him flash-freezes and he does wince, and it's nothing to do with his side. “Don't. Don't you dare.”

“Well? You get it now, though? I wanted to, Daryl. I wanted to… I wanted to stop _carryin’ it around_. I've been carryin’ it for days and I'm so _tired,_ and I just. I just wanted to. I didn't know how.” She lowers her head, hair obscuring her face, and heaves another breath. “I'm sorry.”

It would be better if she would scream at him. Like this, breathing hard and hurting and watching this girl folding her arms around herself and starting to cry, he wishes so much that she would scream at him. It would be so much better. Take what he's dishing out, but instead of _taking_ it and refining it into weeping, fashion it into slings and arrows and hurl it right back at him. He could take that too. He gets that. It would be easier. It's a language he knows.

Instead she's doing this, and it's horrible.

Breaking through it, like shapes emerging through a threadbare and backlit curtain: the memory of her bending over him, touching his face. Telling him that he was okay. Crying while she did it.

Crying while she told him she was sorry.

Suddenly, so ferociously he almost can't stand it, he wants to make her _stop fucking crying,_ and he might do anything necessary to achieve that goal.

“So what happens now?” She wipes at her face, sniffling a little. She looks so goddamn young, so young and so lost. Little girl lost in the deep dark woods, another and more treacherous part of him thinks, lost for days and all alone, and carrying her fear with no help or relief from anyone.

He will not think of her that way. She's not a child. She looks like one, sure, but she's not. She doesn't get to be one. She doesn't get that cover.

We make our choices, and those are what they carry.

“Ain't up to me,” he mutters, and turns away, limping toward the sunlight. “Ain’t up to you neither. Deal with it.”

From the camp is rising a chorus of arguing voices. Tagging along behind him, practically riding on his damn shoulder like a malevolent little demon with no angelic counterpart, is a grinning and sniggering Merle.

 _Y’all are for it, now, baby brother. Yessir. And you in it deep. Gonna wish you jumped on that bike you lifted and brought it back to me, ‘cause now it's too late. As for what’s comin’? That's gonna be a_ big _ol’ mess. Big ol’ pile of shit, one way or the other. And no matter what you do, you gonna be standin’ there with a shovel, you fuckin’ dumbass, ‘cause you can't pull your limp dick outta these people’s business. Christ knows why._

 _‘cept I think you do. I think you got a pretty good idea_.

Cursing up a steady stream under his breath, he makes his way back to them.


	19. when the shit falls all you want to do is run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The cat’s out of the bag about the walkers in the barn, and Daryl is trying to deal with the fallout. But the fallout just keeps falling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I’m back at this - I got Howl to where I want, so I’m swinging back in this direction (and hopefully The Demon Moon’s) for a bit. I’m excited. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading and for letting me know you’re reading. ❤️

Looking at it now, he can't believe he never noticed.

Sure, he'd grant that some of it is that he hasn't had much cause to go near the barn. He's hardly been in the camp until today, and the barn isn't as close to either that or the house than he would have admitted before in the middle of screaming at Beth over the matter of proximity. But he can still scarcely get his head around it—that _any_ of them could have missed it until Glenn was right up close and personal with it. The moans and groans, the rustling of clumsy feet shuffling through decaying straw.

You miss the obvious, you miss what's right on front of you because you don't want to see it, it gets you fucking killed. Every damn time, sooner or later, whatever capricious mercy of the universe is keeping you alive in spite of your own stupidity, it runs out. And then it gets you.

Which is drawing his scattered thoughts in other uncomfortable directions, as he stands here among the rest of them and watches Shane peering through the crack between the barn doors. Shane’a broad back, the tension in his hunched shoulders, the way his fists are clenched and shaking.

Before, the gun he apparently brought back with him from his run with Patricia’s dead husband.

So many things here are so wrong.

A sharp, abrupt growl, an impact against the door, and in spite of his wrathful bravado Shane takes a hurried step back, whirls and stalks back toward them. Toward Rick, who looks as if he'd rather be anywhere else doing literally any possible alternative. “Man, you _cannot_ tell me you're okay with this.”

Rick heaves a breath, and his voice is a tight hiss, as if he's worried about being overheard. Which he likely is. “No, I'm not, but we’re guests here. This isn't our land.”

Shane breaks into an incredulous laugh, features twisting, and gestures around at all of them. “This is our _lives_.”

“Lower your voice.” Glenn, also a hiss, and even tighter than Rick’s. Since Glenn spilled the proverbial goddamn beans, he's seemed progressively more and more unhappy, and it isn't a wonder. Kid will be well aware that he's touched off something he can't control. Those beans can't be shoveled back into the can.

Not that they weren't ready to spill anyway.

Andrea crosses her arms, exhaling. “We can't just sweep this under the rug.”

T-Dog, shaking his head. Looking nearly as unhappy as Glenn. “Ain't right. Not remotely.”

Shane spins back to Rick, and he's clearly trying to bring himself back under some kind of control and basically failing. Daryl suddenly realizes that without meaning to, he's edging closer to Carol’s side; he can't imagine why what's going down in front of him now would pose any direct threat to her, but he's also not seeing much utility in second guessing instincts which haven't, thus far, led him astray.

There are those fists. He doesn't like the look of those fists one fucking bit.

“Okay.” Shane swipes a hand down his face. “We've either gotta go in there, we've gotta make things right, or we've gotta go. Now we've been talkin’ about Fort Benning for a long time, and we—”

Rick swiftly cuts him off. “We can't go.”

“ _Why,_ Rick? Why?”

“Because my daughter’s still out there,” Carol says quietly, and that's when Shane does finally turn the full force of what's spewing out of him directly on her. It's not violent—but it is, underhanded and sliding through the grass of false calm like a viper, and Daryl’s own fists are beginning to shake as something deep and restless inside him begins to shift.

“Look. Look, I think it's time that we all just start to consider the other possibility.”

Rick, firmer. “We aren't leaving Sophia behind.”

 _Don’t,_ some saner part of him is moaning with a mixture of horror and exasperation. _Christ almighty, do not shove your fucking oar in this now, there is no scenario in which you can make anything even vaguely better._ But his mouth is opening and words are coming out, protesting. Near petulant. “Man, I'm close to findin’ this girl. I just found her damn doll not even two days ago.”

Another incredulous laugh, downright scornful. “You found her _doll,_ Daryl, that's what you did. You found a doll.”

His hackles rise, teeth baring in a snarl that must look as bestial as it feels. He did good. Rick said he did good, and he went through ten kinds of hell to do that good, took a fucking bullet for it, and if it's not worth anything… How dare this pompous piece of shit. How _dare_ he.

He pushes forward, swiping at the air. Close to clawing. He hates this. He fucking hates it. A kind of haze descends, and the burgeoning sense of impending disaster swells higher, because he can't stop this any more than Glenn can. “You don't know what the _fuck_ you're talkin’ about.”

“I'm just sayin’ what needs to be said. You get a good lead, it's in the first forty-eight hours.”

Rick steps between them, hands raised. “Shane, _stop_.”

But of course Shane isn't stopping, a sneer of undisguised contempt stretching his mouth into an ugly line. “Lemme tell you somethin’ else, man. If she was alive out there and saw you comin’ all methed out with your buck knife and walker ears around your neck, she would run in the other fuckin’ direction.”

His bones snap into sticks of ice. This isn't the worst. But it's fucking bad. He's been angry since he got here, he's been pissed as hell at Beth, but the truth is that if he's honest, he gets that. He gets why she did what she did. It's bullshit, she deserved every bit of the chewing-out she got, but if her mama and brother are really in there, he sure as shit gets it, and he saw what it cost her. But this.

Staggering out of the woods, ready to shove how much of a white trash circus freak he is right in their faces. _How much did they see?_

Merle, chuckling cruel amusement in the back of his mind. _Toldja, little brother. Toldja how they was thinkin’. They saw what they saw, they saw enough, and whatever nice bullshit they've been sayin’ to you is just that—bullshit. Your new buddy Rick said you did good? Probably said that so you wouldn't try to eat his damn face off his skull. And you know what else? About that girl, you lookin’ for her?_

_This prick ain't wrong._

He's lunging. All he sees is the reddish haze as he hurls himself forward, no thought except to pound Shane’s fucking head into the dirt right up to his neck, and screw what the rest of them think, because he can't make it better and there's no way he can make it worse, but then someone is hauling him back, maybe some _ones,_ and although he's wrestling with every ounce of enraged strength he can summon, their grip on him is stronger.

And shit, maybe he's not even trying all that hard. His gut is sinking toward his boots.

Shouting. Blur of bodies. It occurs to him to wonder, through the chaos of his fury, whether he had been about to give Shane precisely what the asshole wanted.

Rick is inserting himself again, sweeping them back, voice rising past his obvious attempt to keep it down. “Let me just talk to Hershel. Let me figure it out.”

Shane, who has withdrawn a couple of yards, releases a barking scoff. “The hell’re you gonna _figure out?_ ”

“If we’re gonna stay, if we’re gonna clear this barn, I have to talk him into it. I told you, this is his land.”

“Hershel sees those things in there as people. His wife, his stepson.”

Dale, low but insistent, and everyone is turning to him, mild surprise rippling through them—and somehow subtly diffusing a little of the tension. In Daryl, even, and another point of honesty is that though he doesn't have much specific reason to, he's beginning to like Dale. Dale has a modicum of sense. Dale might be one of the few of them who does.

And what he's saying now… Beth’s stricken eyes. Her tears, those tears he would have done just about anything to stop.

_I can't make him see it. I tried. He thinks they're just sick, and he can still help them. I can't make him let go._

_What if it was your brother in there? What would you do?_

Shane stares. “You _knew?_ ”

Dale’s expression falls into weary resignation. “Yesterday I talked to Hershel.”

“And you waited the night?”

“I thought we could survive one more night. We did.” Irritation now, a flash of it. And while barely an hour ago he was shouting Beth into weeping about this exact thing, when it comes to Shane, irritation strikes Daryl as wholly appropriate. “I was waiting until this morning to say something, but Glenn wanted to be the one.”

And shit. So many people here have been lugging around some very ill-advised secrets, but when it comes right down to it, if that's true, the kid has some balls.

Shane waves a dismissive hand, turns back to Rick. “This man is crazy, Rick. If Hershel thinks those things are alive—”

A storm of rattles and growls drowns him out, and as one they all wheel around to the barn. Again he's stepping in front of Carol, and fuck, he shouldn't have left the bow back in camp but it's too late now, and that padlocked chain securing the doors all at once looks mighty flimsy, the doors themselves ancient and splintered and only just managing to hang on by their rusty hinges.

Shane, prick though he undoubtedly is, is right about one more thing. This is crazy. These people are completely fucking crazy. Hershel, Beth’s sister, Beth herself if she's been silent about it this long. Not one night but several, letting this madness continue while they all slept in blissful ignorance scarcely yards away from a bloody mauling, and Hershel was also right that night Daryl spent in the house. Dead-on.

It's amazing they've all survived this long.

~

The haze hasn't lifted. It's only transferred itself into a new form, and the sheer idiocy of what he's doing is no help whatsoever in stopping him as he lifts the saddle, wincing at the twinge in his side, and limps toward the horse’s stall.

He doesn't know this one’s name. He only knows that it's not the twitchy deathtrap that threw him, and that's plenty good enough for his work. As for asking anyone, as for telling anyone, fuck that, because he already knows what the response will be. At best, feigned concern that's merely an attempt to keep him out of it, and they wouldn't even be incorrect to do so, but things are falling the fuck apart, the center isn't holding if it ever genuinely was, and one way or another their days here are numbered. Hours, even.

None of the rest of them are going out. Preoccupied by their own stupid squabbling, by foolishness and straight-up insanity, and if he's the one who gets his priorities straight before it's all too late, then so fucking be it.

He almost found her. He was so close. Maybe within sight of her if he had just known where to look. Maybe she was hiding. Shane said it. Shane said, and Merle confirmed, and more often than not, Merle has known what he's talking about.

But if he can convince her that he's there with their blessing. If he can convince her that he's a friend, no matter how he looks, and he’s there merely because her mother can't be. Overcome her fear of him. Put out his hand like she's a little wild animal and get her to come to him.

He's done that before. Coaxed them, been successful.

That they've usually ended up dead once they were close enough for him to make his move… Well, he’ll ignore that. The premise applies.

“You can't.”

He halts, eyes slipping closed. _Fuck_. Naturally it would be her, come to stop him. When she’s the one out of all of them who should want him to go.

Naturally she would know where he'd be.

“I'm fine.”

Louder, but quavering, and suddenly that weakness is making him angry all over again. No one here is strong. Not a single one of them. Not when they need most to be. “Hershel said you need to heal.”

He grits his teeth, moving again. Gingerly. Pointless, because there's no fucking way in hell he can be _ginger_ with what he intends, and the second he gets on that horse is going to be the start of hours of relentless torture. “Yeah, I don't care.”

“Well, I do.” He's still not facing her, but he hears the scuffle of straw as she steps closer, the attempt to back her voice with bone despite her trembling. “Rick’s going out later to follow the trail.”

 _Bullshit_. Rick has his own problems, and they're far more pressing. “I ain't gonna sit around and do nothin’.”

“No, you're going to go out and get yourself hurt even worse.” There are tears threatening behind that tremble, gathering like clouds, and he wants to ram his head against the side of the stall, because fucking hell, if people keep crying at him he's going to start screaming and never stop.

And then she goes and adds a punch to it. Seizes him by the back of the neck and slams his head into the stall for him.

“We don't know if we’re going to find her, Daryl. We don't.” She sucks in a breath, her voice dropping. Miserable. “I don't.”

Oh.

Slowly, finally, he turns to face her. If Shane made his bones ice, this is making them water, bubbling an awful lukewarm through his marrow. Weak blood. She's _weak,_ and she's trying to infect him with it. Her own fucking daughter, less than forty-eight hours after he found what he found, and she’s simply giving up—everyone here is _giving up,_ folding as if the hand they're holding is actually bad, and if she's joined their ranks…

Far back in the shadowy recesses of his mind, where Merle has made his home, he's beginning to wonder if he's the one who's crazy. If he's been crazy this whole time, and what happened in the gorge was his one break into real self-awareness. A gift that he rejected, a chance he missed. Now he's making the same damn mistakes all over again.

Believing that this can work out.

His fingers dig into the saddle, nails hooked. “What?”

Her tears are overflowing at last, trickling down her cheeks and shining in the dimness. He could throw the thing at her.

“I can't lose you too.”

He does throw it. Not at her but at the ground—and he knows a tantrum when it happens, and that's why he can't stay. Fuck this. Fuck everything. Fuck the whole viciously treacherous world. He’ll go out there and burn the entire fucking forest to the ground, because what does it matter? He throws the saddle, and he actually feels a wave of bitter satisfaction when his side explodes into hot pain and he stumbles, doubles over and whines as he presses a reflexive hand against one of those hells he went through for this feeble cunt and a daughter who frankly deserves more. Someone who won't give up on her.

Let her see. Let her see it, and if she feels like shit for it, so much the better.

She hurries forward and reaches out, gulping back a sob. “Are you alright?”

“ _Leave me be_.” He shakes her off, shoving blindly at her. Pushing past her toward the blurry square of daylight, and what's blinding him is just the rage. That's all. It's dumb, brutal power but it's power.

If his eyes are stinging, it's sweat and pain.

“Stupid bitch.”

Standing on that empty, shattered Atlanta street, the girl telling him that they had to stop looking. Telling him that they could try again in the morning—but he knew that was bullshit every bit as well as she did. They both knew what she was really saying, as the weakness seeped into her voice like poison.

_We don’t know if we’re going to find him._

It’s her. It’s all her. It’s her fault he's here. It's her fault this is happening. He should have left her. He should have left her the fuck behind in that nursery and if she died, oh well; that's just the world now, because what good has any of this done him? Out here in the middle of nowhere with people he doesn't like, who don't like him, hurt because of them and because he's the only one who gives two shits about something he never should have given a single solitary shit about to begin with. Never should have encountered in the first place. Never should have been here. He doesn't belong.

Stabbed his own damn brother in the back because of her. And now look.

_Stupid bitch._

~

But inasmuch as he's capable of liking anything at present, he likes this hill.

He hasn't yet been up here. But he's seen it and its pale stack of a ruined chimney, found his attention drawn to it every time he's within view of it, and for lack of anything better to do, he's finally made his way up the slight rise to its top. In truth it's barely a hill at all, but it's high enough to afford a decent view of the rest of the farm, and there's something comforting about that vantage point. Perhaps the feeling of better defense, perhaps something else, but either way, it's a place far away from the rest of them, and as he stands and surveys the landscape, the enraged whirlwind in his mind is quieting.

From here it all looks pristine. Untroubled. It's pretty, he’ll admit that. Whatever else it is, it's good land; he’s no farmer but he can recognize that much. It's the kind of land a family would hang onto. The golden fields all spread out before him dotted with cloud-shadows and the roaming black-and-white of the cows, the deeper green clusters of bowing oaks, the lazily spinning blades of the windmill, the ragged little camp and the large gleaming white of the house like an old plantation estate in the midst of it. It's not that grand, and it doesn't fill him with the knee-jerk visceral resentment that such buildings always do, but it's big.

Nevertheless, he doesn't think he hates it. Not really.

Not very much. 

The dingy gray hulk of the barn just visible through a few of those oaks. Sour bile rises in his throat and he turns, limps over to the crumbling pile of stones and sinks down onto one of them, lowering his throbbing head into his hands.

The oaks up here are even older than the ones down by the house, and one of them has half grown into the chimney ruin; he reaches back and, for reasons he doesn't totally understand, feels for its solid, rough trunk, as if seeking some kind of anchor. The root system of a tree this big must go down a long way. How many storms has it withstood? How many hard freezes and summer torrents? It's been here and it hasn't been moved. The thing some unknown man built is falling apart, most of it already gone, but the tree is still here. The tree is participating in its erosion. When it's gone, the tree will remain.

Here he is, waxing internally rhapsodic about a fucking tree while those idiots get themselves killed down there. He huffs contempt. Surely he can find a way to blame Beth for this, too.

No. Probably not.

He presses his fingertips against his eyes until slow motion fireworks bloom behind his lids. He fucked up. There's so much blame to go around here, every one of them has done their part to get them to where they all are, but he's not exempt. He fucked up, and he's been fucking up pretty much constantly this entire time. His choices—no one made him save her. No one made him drag her ass out of the city, and no one made him take her to the farm. No one has made him stay here. No one sent him out on that horse, or down that ravine. Every bad choice, traced back to the very first one—and he doesn't even know where the first one lies.

Maybe the first one was entering the world in the first place.

Not that he had any say in that. Not that anyone consulted him.

 _Oh, for Christ’s sweet sake._ Merle leans against the tree opposite him and rolls his eyes extravagantly; not being able to technically see what's in front of him does nothing to reduce the vividness of the image. _Now you're gonna sit up here and feel all sorry for yourself like some little kid sulkin’ in his room. Dunno why I'm even surprised. That's your modus fuckin’ operandi, ain't it? That’s your rule of fuckin’ engagement. Shit don't go your way and you take your ball and go home._

He's not in the least surprised about this. He has to still be suffering from a concussion; he can't be in his right mind if his mind wasn’t right to begin with. “Fuck you, bro.”

 _Yeah, fuck me. See? You ain't even gonna attend to the truth bombs I'm droppin’. Lookie here, boy._ He drops into a crouch, hands dangling between his knees. _Maybe them bitches ain't got no use for you, and maybe they do, but you still did just like you thought, right? Threw a fuckin’ tantrum. The hell’d that get you? You feel any better now?_

No. He doesn't answer. It doesn't matter what he says or doesn't say, because Merle will persist regardless. But then something hits him, and he lowers his hands and blinks. “Huh?”

_Huh what?_

“You said _maybe they do_.” He shakes his head, not bothering to even try to hide his bewilderment. “You was sayin’ they ain't got no use, for sure. Now you're sayin’ they might?” A thin laugh slips out of him. “Man, which is it?”

Merle shrugs. _Hey, I don't fuckin’ know. I ain't no mind-reader. All’s I’m sayin’ is, if they're fakin’ it, they're mighty committed to the bit, you know what I'm sayin’?_ He snorts, leers a little and palms his groin. _I been with enough whores tryin’ to fake it just to make me feel like my dick’s bigger or some bullshit, like I need the help where that's concerned. I'd like to think I can tell the difference between that and the real thing by now._

Daryl turns his face away, jaw working as disgust twists his diaphragm. Even now Merle insists on being like this. As if he could be any other way. “Jesus, will you stop.”

 _Nope,_ Merle says cheerfully. _You always did need me around to keep your head straight, brother. You fucked me over, sure as shootin’, and you did it ‘cause of one of those bitches, but that don't change the fact that you been an asshole to them almost fit to match friend Shane down there, even if you ain't makin’ near his level of trouble, so that's somethin’ you might wanna think on._

_Hey, I don't blame that woman wantin’ to give up. Neither should you. Ain't right, but I get it. It's easier on her. Or she imagines it might be._

He sighs, ducks his head, and looks back at the tree. In the space Merle was occupying, there's only air and sun-dappled grass.

He heaves another sigh and pushes to his feet, and limps back down the hill.

~

It's getting well onto afternoon when he goes to look for Beth. For a variety of reasons he wouldn't want to own up to the fact that he _is_ looking for her, but he does.

With Carol, it hadn't been nearly the disaster he was anticipating. Carol might be weakening, but when he slouched up to her and mumbled an embarrassed request for her to follow him, led her to the pond and showed her the rose among the nodding reeds, he didn't miss the way light passed across her face. Dim, but it was there.

He hadn't known what else to do. Had fully expected her to tell him to go fuck himself, and well-justified she would have been. But no, she went with him, she saw what he wanted her to see, and she didn't treat it like it was nothing.

She stood beside him, reached out a hesitant hand and ran a fingertip along one of its white petals.

Those hands. He's seen hands like hers before, work-worn and battered. Hands older than the body that carries them. He knows them intimately, even if he's only just met their owner, and for a few seconds he couldn't quite breathe.

Then he cleared his throat. “You see it?”

“See what?”

She didn't look up at him, and for another second or two he was worried she would brush him off after all, call the whole thing stupid and walk away. But he managed to inhale, and then he managed to go on.

“I'll find her.”

 _Idiot_.

But he's so close. He is. They are. He can _feel_ her out there, not far at all, and if he could only try one more time. Just once. One more chance, and he’ll get it right, and screw the rest of it, because if he can do that then none of the rest of it will matter.

“Hey.” He cleared his throat again. “I'm sorry. About what happened this morning.”

It was pathetic. He's so spectacularly bad at apologies. Unpracticed, among other things; Merle never gave a shit about apologies, won't when Daryl finally finds him, and no one else in his life ever cared much for them either. They're not worth the words used to voice them. But he couldn't _not_ say it, and when at last she raised her head and met his eyes, he saw that light.

And he knew he hadn't completely fucked it up. Maybe a little, but not completely.

“You wanted to look for her,” she said softly. “Why? This whole time I've wanted to ask you.”

“‘cause I think she's still out there.” Simple. Also nowhere near the entire truth, but the entire truth is something he can't bear to look at, let alone find the words for. It's too much. It's too deep. It would be easier to literally carve a chunk of flesh from his side and hand it to her. That, he believed he could in fact do without a whole lot of trouble, and it might make more sense in the end.

She said nothing, just went on looking at him, and he offered her a crooked little smirk. Rueful. He knows he's ridiculous. He merely had to hope she'd know he can't help it. “Truth is, what else I got to do?”

She breathed a laugh, shook her head, and he didn't need her to do more than that. He'd already gotten so much more than he had dared to hope for.

“We’ll find her,“ she said, still soft. And to him, she sounded almost certain. “We will.” And she reached out again and touched the rose, and once more his breath ran clean away and felt as if it took his lungs with it.

“I see it.”

Now, Beth. To offer her her own apology? Hell, maybe. She isn't owed one in nearly the way Carol was, but the girl’s been through her own kind of hell, and someone should acknowledge that. He doesn't have to excuse what she did—what she _didn’t_ do—in order to let her know that he gets why it happened.

Perhaps even glean some hints from her about how to keep this situation from flipping sideways, if she has any clue herself. Which he doubts, but regardless.

And perhaps, give her a heads up that some species of shit is likely to hit the fan, soon, and she might want to prepare herself for it.

Any or all of that. He's turning it over and over in his head, eyeing the more cultivated roses at the side of the house as he passes them and considering the mildly ludicrous prospect of trying the flower tactic on her as well, when he sees the others gathered on the porch and stops, frustration rolling in like a threatening storm with the old anger behind it, and that reliably sane part of him thinks _god, not again._

Sitting on their asses, thumbs right up in there, as the daylight burns away.

And far in the back, near the door, Beth sits curled in on herself with her lank hair hanging in her face, skin so colorless it might as well be gray.

Glenn is getting to his feet as Andrea and T-Dog approach, looking from one to the other, brow furrowed. _Rick_. “He went off with Hershel. We were supposed to leave a couple of hours ago.”

Carol said Rick was going, he knew it was bullshit, and bullshit indeed it was. At least Glenn appears to sort of remotely care. Daryl wrestles the limp back into a kind of mutated swagger, and in the periphery of his vision he sees Carol as he spreads his hands in _what the fuck_ exasperation. “Yeah, you were, what the hell?”

Carol draws up beside him, bites her lip. “Rick told us he was going out.”

He swings his gaze from her rapidly rising anxiety to their blank faces, and although goddammit, he is categorically not going to lose it like this, not _again,_ in spite of himself he's starting to scan his surroundings for candidates to punch. Animate or not, he's not in a mood to be picky. “Fuck, isn't anybody takin’ this seriously? We got us a damn _trail_.” He whirls, ignoring his side’s whimper, in time to see Shane.

Shane, coming swiftly toward them, a bag of what appear to be long guns slung over one shoulder.

And every alarm in his head bursts into one extended simultaneous blare.

Yet somehow they're still distant. Someone has just finally come to their senses and decided in favor of the benefit of being armed, that's all, especially if they're headed out into the woods, and rightly so. So when Shane hands him a rifle as he pushes past and mutters “You with me, man?” he accepts it without question. Without further consideration.

Yes, he's a fucking idiot.

The alarms increase in volume, and he looks down at the gun in his hands even as his legs are carrying him forward. This isn't right. This is rapidly taking on the inertia of a nightmare, and he's willingly and _knowingly_ stepped right into its path and been swept up into it, and if there was ever an opportunity to head it off, delay it even the smallest bit, that's past now.

As if pulled in by a magnet he meets Beth’s hollow eyes, and knows she knows too.

Shane is bellowing something about how _it's time to grow up,_ ignoring Maggie’s desperate protests, and once more, everything else aside,he's probably right. This was never going to be a world for children—for that little boy sitting on the porch with his mom, watching all of this with round eyes. For that little girl lost in the woods, with no one out there searching for her.

For a good girl fallen in with a bad man.

 _I'm sorry,_ he gets no chance to say, and then Shane is striding toward the barn and he's following, helpless. He has to go. Maybe he can still throw up some kind of roadblock. Maybe he can find some way to hold it all off until Rick gets here. Fuck, taking a swing at Shane seemed to bring everything to a screeching halt before, potentially that option is open to him now.

_You fool, he’ll fucking shoot you. Look at his eyes. He's crazier than all of them put together. He will turn on anyone who gets in his way now, and he will shoot them down in the dirt like a dog._

Merle can give him shit for his choices. But ultimately, none of this has much to do with him. He's not that important, never was, and this would be happening with or without him.

Might as well happen _with,_ then.


	20. till one of us renders it so

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the barn opens, Beth and Daryl face what emerges. Together - and as far apart as they’ve ever been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here we are at the MSF. Which is one of my favorite episodes of the show’s entire run. Clearly the focus of that episode’s final moments is in a specific place, and it continues to be hugely rewarding to turn to other parts of these kinds of scenes and view the events from those points of view. 
> 
> Hope you guys feel the same. ❤️ As always, I adore hearing your thoughts, and thank you so much for them.

She doesn't follow. Her legs simply take her there.

Things are happening. Events are unfolding. She's only peripherally aware of them. She observes everything around her with a kind of cool removal she's never experienced before. Not at what she believed were the worst moments of her life, locked in a transparent-walled tomb with death snarling all around her and the stench of blood burning in her nose—in those moments, she was there. She was present. She felt the beast borne of a potent mixture of horror and fear; it clawed at her, snapped viciously at her like a rabid animal, and it was all she could do to beat it away. Somehow she did, she kept herself sane and when the time came to run she could do it, but she never stopped _feeling_.

She never let go. She looked at her dead friend and those dead babies and she took the sight in. She allowed it to pass over and through her, and she accepted even that pain as a mark of what it was: She was still alive.

Now, as she walks across the lawn toward the barn, following Shane’s bellows and the absurd vision of her father and the others with a growling walker snagged by a catch-pole, she thinks of how free she is in this moment. She knows what's coming. It's the only thing that can come. It's the only thing that was ever going to happen, and it never could possibly have mattered when or how she found the lunatic strength to tell Daryl, so there was never anything she could have done to stop it.

She's never been anything but helpless. Any strength she's ever had was an illusion.

She gets it now.

One way or another, this was always where the road ended: With Shane, with guns, with angry shouting and anxious cries and the hissing groans of the dead, with the frantic rattling of the barn doors, with Daryl’s face turned away from her and the sensation of a hillside slowly crumbling and sliding in a single long rush into a roiling sea. The edge disappearing under her feet, and nothing beneath but falling forever and ever. She moves easily up to the swirling edge of the fray and is pulled in like a twig into the wall of a tornado, spinning higher and higher and looking down on all of this like a bird riding the thermals. Observing with her cool, keen bird eyes.

Shane whirling, all their guns raised, and the barn door crashes open, and Hell pours out in a shambling, stinking wave.

She staggers. Nearly falls. She's aware of Maggie at her elbow, a grasping hand. She ignores it. She should want to look away from this, and she doesn't. She doesn't want anything. Perhaps she died in that hospital after all, or was infected—was scratched or bitten and she merely didn't notice, and he didn't either, and it's only taken her this long to turn. She watches them come and she hears the thunder of the guns, sees the twisted faces of men and walkers and the plumes of tawny dust rising into the sun—a bright, happy, smiley-face sun that belongs in some other world where things like this can’t possibly happen.

Beside her, gripping her, Maggie isn't screaming. Maggie isn't making a sound. Daddy has fallen to his knees by the dead walker still caught by the pole, hands limp in his lap, and his face.

His _face._

_It’s okay, Daddy. It’s almost over. It’ll be better when it is, you’ll see. When you let go and you let yourself be dead. Like them._

_Like me._

The faces of the dead… She knows these loose, rotting faces. These are neighbors. These are friends. There's Frank Norris, who kept the drug store in town. There's Melda Rose, the nice old lady with the consignment shop down the street from him. There's the Lewis twins, Rhonda and Rachel, who led the cheerleading squad in all their redheaded glory. There's Philip Young, who owned the the dairy farm on the other side of town.

There's Jimmy. Poor Jimmy, who gave her her first kiss in the hayloft and would have gone further if she'd let him, who was always sweet to her even if he'd seemed a little baffled by her at times, who is now going down in the dirt like a sack of potatoes as a shotgun blast eliminates most of what's left of his head.

Of course Daddy would have tried to save Jimmy.

The dead faces. And then the faces of the living. She's having a difficult time telling one from the other. Shane looks half crazed, teeth bared and eyes wide and wild as he fires again and again and the bodies fall, and she wonders how different he would look if he was mowing down people yet alive, and she wonders vaguely how many living people he's killed—because she doubts very much that the answer is none. All of them: how many people have they killed? Why did they kill them?

Has Daryl ever killed anyone?

Her gaze is settled on his face now. She can't look away. She can't make sense of what she sees there. He doesn't look dead. He looks so alive, but he looks so _cold,_ so hard with that rifle in his hands spitting death, and she realizes that she might be looking at herself. He's there but he's not, and like her legs brought her to this place and are keeping her standing, his hands are doing what they're doing independently of him. Possibly she's only seeing what she wants to see, although she doesn't really want anything, but she does see it, and all her remaining breath blasts up into her head, making her feel as though she might simply explode like he's fired his gun directly into her brain. Her legs could carry her forward now through the hail of bullets and throw her into him, wrench the gun out of his hands. Not that it would stop anything, but it could stop _him,_ because she can bear anything now that she's left herself, except for the way he looks now. He's always been there. He's always been so intensely there. Even staggering like a walker, even with his dazed eyes and his features gone slack with exhaustion, he was there, blazing like a fire, and she recognized in him the fierce desire to remain alive. It was all that could have brought him back. That, and the determination to bring a lost little girl back to her mother.

That's not what she's seeing now. That Daryl is gone.

She hates it. Academically, with bland calculation. She hates it, she hates him, she hates them all, she hates Daddy and the horror contorting him, she hates Maggie clinging to her, she hates the little boy a few yards away who has the audacity to retain both mother and father, and she hates Daryl for not dropping his gun and walking away from what this is making him into, and she hates the world and she hates herself for existing in it, she hates the blood even now rushing through her veins and her own traitorous beating heart. She didn't know she could feel such hate. She didn't know she could feel such death in every part of her. She didn't know she could die like this.

She stands there and she drowns in her hatred, and she watches as Mama lurches out of the barn, her decaying mouth falling open and her swollen tongue purple and her eyes like milky marbles rolling in her head and her hands hooked into claws as she seeks for the meat in front of her.

And she watches as Daryl’s expertly placed shot takes her down.

And she falls like Daryl really has turned his gun on her, finally, and it's a relief.

~

Over the ponderously weird course of his life, he's done so many things because he had no other choice.

The nights he's lost falling-down blackout drunk. The stupid fights he's thrown punches in, which he didn't have to be in the middle of and which never had to happen in the first place. The jokes he's laughed at and the shit he's spouted, views he didn't actually hold and which he deeply disliked the sound of. Shit about people who weren't white, who weren't men, the word _faggot_ getting thrown around like clumsy wasted fists. Feeling dirty after, the lingering taste of a bunch of mean, disgusting garbage to say, but what else could he have done? Would've gotten beaten on himself if he hadn't gone along. Would have been relentlessly tormented by Merle, and part of him would have been certain he deserved it, for not knowing his place, not accepting his people and his blood, thinking he was somehow better than them. Giving himself airs.

He's redneck white trash. He should act like it, and whether or not he wants to really shouldn't enter the calculus.

That isn't why this is happening now. That isn't why he took the gun when Shane handed it to him, and it's not why he followed. It's not why he's firing, dropping body after body—and it's idiotic to feel any sort of regret or even reticence about it, because they're already _dead,_ and it was insane that they've been allowed to stay so close for so long. He's only doing what he has to do, what any reasonable man should do. Shane is right about that. Has to be.

He doesn't have those old excuses. He could have walked away before the shooting ever started. He's been considering walking away for days now, and that he hasn't yet sacked up and done it is no one’s fault but his own.

But he's looking down the rifle’s sights now, picking his targets with the cool precision he always does, and all he wants to do is scream and scream.

Is this woman Beth’s mother? Is this boy her brother? How about this one? He finds himself examining their faces, looking for any hint of familial resemblance even as he blows those faces to hell. There are so many. They seem to never end. Any of them could be anyone, all of them used to be someone, and he can't stop shooting.

He knows she's watching him. He's not looking and she's not in his sightline, but she must be, and he can feel her eyes on him like a cold little hand on the back of his neck.

She is what she's been since he met her. Not only, but in part.

A witness.

Everything happens until nothing does. With a suddenness that throws him into shocked confusion, the firing ceases, and fiercely ringing silence slams down over them like a hammer, broken only by the rasping calls of crows and a few muffled gasps. Stillness follows it, and he dares to imagine it might be over—though what comes after this, fuck only knows—when the barn door creaks once more time and a small form shuffles into the cheerful afternoon sunlight.

He’s found her.

At last, he's found her.

 _Toldja,_ Merle whispers, and he sounds sad and tired and old. _Toldja you didn't want to. Toldja it wouldn’t be nothin’ you wanted to find._

Carol yanks his attention back as she rips the air apart with her awful, trembling cry. There's a blur in the corner of his vision as she launches herself forward and he drops the rifle and catches her, practically tackles her, and she struggles for a few horrible seconds before she goes limp and shuddering in his arms. She hasn't fallen quiet; she's wailing, a sound he's heard before from hideously wounded animals who haven't quite managed to die, and all he can do is hold onto her as Rick steps forward and raises his gun.

It's so huge in Rick’s hand. It's so huge, and she's such a little girl. It's too big for her, he wants to protest. It'll hurt her too bad, and he could go back and get his bow, make it smaller and neater. Do that much for her. He could, if Rick would let him. Give him time.

There's no time.

 _Don’t,_ he's whispering as Carol starts to crumple. Or perhaps he's not. Perhaps it's just in his head. _Please don’t. Please._

No way she can hear him, even if he's speaking aloud. Not over her own moans.

Not over the sound of the gunshot as it shatters the air.

The last of her muscle tension seems to flow out through her skin and into the ground like water as she slumps, and he's crouched over her now, arm wrapped around her middle, looking at the little body jerking backward and sprawling, her head bouncing as she hits the ground. All her features have disappeared. She's merely one more mound of ragged cloth and dead flesh in a landscape full of them.

The stooped shadow Rick has become, gun arm hanging loose at his side. Shrunken. Weak.

Pathetic.

Daryl ducks his head and closes his eyes, and he doesn't stop seeing.

Her, rising from where she's collapsed. Moving. Maggie hissing her name in surprise and then alarm, and he looks back up and locks his gaze on her as she walks, casual-paced as if nothing unusual is going on at all, to the kid where he stands pressed against his mother’s side, and she plucks the gun out of his hands. He stares at her, bewildered and briefly forgetting the woman weeping beneath him, as she picks her way over the scattered corpses, moving with obvious purpose and her own gaze fixed ahead of her, her face unreadable.

Blank.

The rest of his surroundings melt into the background, melt into shades as the sun sharpens and bleaches white. The others, even Carol, all ghosts. There's only him and her, and her outlines are sharp as a blade as she lowers herself to her knees by one of the bodies—which is stirring, groping for her with jittering fingers, for her dangling, silvery strands of hair.

She looks like an old woman, Beth does. It rocks him with a wave of vertigo so strong he's almost sick.

Laying her free hand against the walker’s ruined face. He did that. He remembers, like a bolt of lightning in the otherwise murky cloud of a storm. Took the shot, saw its— _her_ —head blow out in a splatter of red-brown. Decisive. Final.

_Nothing is ever final._

_That's the hell of it._

Because he was wrong, anyway. He was so wrong. Beth is so gentle in how she handles this dead woman, this torture, and he knows he's looking at terrible strength he does not and does not want to ever understand, biting his lip to keep back his wince as she lays the muzzle of the gun against the woman’s temple and pulls the trigger.

The woman sags. The gun slips from Beth’s bloody fingers. And she simply kneels there, staring at nothing, as Maggie stumbles to her and drops down beside her, circles her arms around her and pulls her, quivering, against her sister’s chest.

 _We’re going to have so many graves to dig,_ he thinks—and the thought is thin, like the air thousands of feet above sea level. _Christ, so many. It's going to take us for-fucking-ever._

No. Could leave them lying right where they are. The whole world is a grave now. It belongs to the dead, and the rest of them are strangers in a land they lost a long time ago. Helpless. Hopeless. All he can do is watch Beth as bit by bit she goes as limp as the dead. All he can do is hold Carol as her sobs subside into thick whimpers, and wait for even that to pass.

And later he’ll get to his feet, and go, and tear that fucking rose up by the roots.

 


	21. you did what you did and you followed through

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of the walker massacre at the barn, Daryl and Beth struggle to reevaluate their places and what comes next. Of course, there’s always the question of whether it - or anything - even matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m back! One of my big writing projects is done for the moment so at least currently I can jump back into fic a bit more. 
> 
> Thank you as always for reading and commenting; even the smallest kind thing you say is an enormous motivator when the work gets rough. ❤️

She stumbles. She doesn't fall.

She understands now that she's not going to fall. As Maggie staggers to her feet and brings Beth along, so many things have become so piercingly clear. So many things have been simplified, and not only by virtue of the corpses strewn in the dust. The figures of people standing all around, motionless as trees, and the unseen weight of their attention. Not on her. She would be surprised if any of them are paying attention to her, and that's good.

Rick’s gunshot is still ringing in her ears, drowning out the echo of the shot she fired.

Maggie won't let her go. That's fine; where would she go now? What would she do? It's finished, all done, and she did the last thing she felt was required of her. All that's left for her is to exist, stand here pressed against Maggie’s chest and breathe, deep and steady and out of sync with Maggie’s hectic gasps.

_It’s okay,_ she thinks. Her whole body is loose, close to limp. No, she won't fall, but she might drift into the sky and float away. _It’s all right, Maggie. They’re dead now._

She also understands that this is the calm in the middle of a much larger storm. They've passed into the eye, and very soon the wall will sweep over them and the wind will rise again, and it might well tear this place apart. This part is done, but Shane isn't. What's wrong there wasn’t just about the barn or what was inside it. And it's more than even Shane; there's a fracture in this group, a fault, and the pressure is building. Soon it'll slip and strike.

“C’mon,” Maggie whispers, rough. Hoarse. Choked with tears. “Let’s go. Let’s go back to the house.”

She allows herself to be turned, guided, and she walks easily enough. Her vision is unfocused, a confusing kaleidoscope of images, but beside her she sees Daddy lurching up, staggering, starting to follow with Rick and Shane both close at his heels. The others too, though not all. Glenn, Dale. T-Dog. Lori and Carl. Andrea remains behind, staring down at the carnage, and still curled prostrate on the ground, as limp as the bodies: Carol, her forehead against the ground as she heaves with sobs, Daryl leaning over her.

It would be good, in another version of this scene, to go to her. Try to comfort her. There's no way she would ever succeed, but it would be right to try. Sometimes trying is the best you can do.

No. She's finished with trying. Walking now, and breathing and the dull thud of her heart, but no more trying.

Shane’s voice is raised in more accusations. This isn't in the least surprising. _You knew. You knew and you kept it from us._

Daddy. Quavering, weak. She's never heard him sound so old. _I didn't know._

_That’s bullshit._

Something from Rick, as usual trying to placate a man who doesn't in the least want to be placated. Maybe someone else; the voices are blurring just like her vision, sound into sight, because it doesn't matter. The house is rising in front of her, enormous and white, the door yawning. She wants to be inside. She doesn't want to feel the sun on her head and neck and shoulders anymore. The sun shouldn't be shining at all; how could it want to show its face when things like this are happening, when a little dead girl collapses into dust spattered with her own rotting brains?

But Shane is so angry.

“He doesn't care about Sophia,” she murmurs as she and Maggie climb the steps together. “Or. Maybe he does, but. That's not what he's mad about.”

Maggie pauses in the doorway, glancing down at her, shock and numb horror briefly giving way to confusion. “Huh?”

“Shane. He's mad because he thinks he got tricked. But he already knew Sophia was dead. Or he wanted to know that.” Beth pauses at the foot of the stairs, looking up into the dimness and blinking as her eyes adjust, ignoring the stomping feet and continuing argument behind and all around them. Tramping and snorting like angry bulls, whining like hurt dogs. “He wanted her to be dead. Now that she is, it’s better for him.”

Does he know that himself? He may not. It wouldn't shock her to discover that he doesn't, that he won't _let_ himself know it. He's a bad man, she's certain of that now, and dangerous, but not all bad dangerous people want to admit that they're that way. Everyone wants to be a hero in their own story, and no one wants to believe they might be the villain.

This isn't a story. It's too absurd, too stupid, too cruel to be a story.

She shrugs Maggie off. One step, another, climbing into the shadows. Back toward her room, her bed, where she's been spending more and more time, even if only in her head. There's no reason to stay down here. She has no place in this fight. If the rest of them are going to get themselves killed, that's what they're going to do, and whatever is going to happen to Daddy now, she can't help him, if she ever could.

Maggie?

Maggie is following. Thankfully she's not speaking. Her footfalls are as light as the others are heavy. Maggie is not where Beth is, not even as close as Carol must be to that terribly blank place, but Maggie might comprehend it, a little better. Now that the lie has been exposed in a way no one can deny, now that the illusion has been dispelled.

At the top of the stairs, the sound of voices falls away as though they've stepped into a different world. Still audible but muffled and remote. The hall is cloaked in quiet as thick as the shadows. So strange, for there to be so many shadows when the sun is so bright outside. She moves down it toward her room, and by the window at the end and beside her door she pauses and looks out at the yard.

The figures are small at this distance, but she doesn't mistake them. The bodies, and also Daryl and Carol. They don't appear to have budged. Andrea is nowhere in sight.

_I wonder when we’ll have the funerals._

Her room. It's darker in here than anywhere else she's been. She pauses again, just for a moment, then goes to the bed and sinks down onto it, drawing her legs up and lowering herself onto her side, her arms tucked close to her chest. _Fetal_. Like a baby, unable to return to the mother she sent to a second death.

Maggie hesitates, then sits down beside her, half turned. She's silhouetted in the light from the nearest window, her face almost completely obscured. Beth doesn't have to see it. She closes her eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” Maggie breathes.

Barely that much. And not a breath at all; it's airless as a vacuum and just as lifeless. Nothing can live in that space.

Nevertheless, it does deserve some sort of response.

“I know.” _I’m not._

_I have nothing to be sorry for._

“He said we could help them. I wanted to believe him. I just… I wanted that so bad.” Beth opens her eyes in time to see Maggie scrubbing at her face, her features wrenching, her cheeks shining and tear-streaked. This is all as it should be. “You weren't here when they died, you didn't see how awful it was.”

“You don't know what I've seen.”

“No. I don't. You're right, I'm sorry.” Maggie drops her hand into her lap, looks at Beth for what feels like a long time. The last of the voices have died away and the house has gone silent. The window is open, the curtains stirring gently in the breeze, but even outside, there's nothing from the birds or cows. As though they've all gone away.

And then Maggie actually smiles at her, tiny and wretchedly twisted. “Thank you. For dealing with Mom. For… For helping her.”

“I had to.”

“I know. I couldn't have. I get that now.” The edges of her face are lit up in hard contrast as she releases a dense breath and her head sags back between her shoulders. “ _Shit,_ we were so stupid.”

“Yeah. We were.” Her too. In different ways, but stupid all the same. Daryl would probably agree, but Daryl has been just as stupid as the rest of them. Good, and even kind in his rough, brusque way, trying to help, trying to make it better when no one owed him anything, but perhaps that in itself was the core of his stupidity.

He should have left her in the hospital. It would have been better. She closes her eyes again, and the mattress seems to swallow her like a grave.

“We were stupid. That’s why we should die.”

~

When the shouting is over, when all the cursing and furious accusations have been exhausted, when everyone has strained themselves to the breaking point and withdrawn to their respective corners to nurse their wounds, when there really and truly is nothing left, there are the dead.

He stands and looks at them, his hands hanging at his sides. The truth is that right now, he feels as useless as he ever has in his entire and generally useless fucking life.

It was all for nothing. All that pain, all that trying— _worse_ than nothing, because they fooled themselves into hope, which he believes might be the greatest swindle one can perpetrate. And he participated. Was encouraged, and encouraged it in his turn.

Carol is gone. They're all gone.

Except Rick. Crouched by the little girl, gazing silently down at her.

Another person, a person who isn't him, might try to say something. _Are you okay,_ maybe, or _it wasn’t your fault._ And in fact, the bulk of the fault here doesn't rest with Rick. Can’t. There are too many other people who deserve it more. Rick is an idiot, but surely no more than Daryl, and Rick hasn't been lying to anyone. Rick didn't lock a small herd of geeks in a barn and assume everything would be fine and dandy.

Rick didn't grab a gun and go apeshit at the worst possible moment.

But it’s weird to stand here only a few feet away and say nothing, especially when Rick must know he's here. And he could sneak quietly away, fuck off and stare at something else for a while—maybe go make good on his plan to tear that fucking rose out of the ground and rip it to shreds with his bare hands—but.

But.

He clears his throat. Weakest sound. Shit, this is pathetic. “Hey.”

Rick glances over his shoulder, doesn't rise. The sun is on its way down but still high, and his eyes are lost in shadow. A moment of silence, and that unseen gaze. Then, rough and dry: “Hey.”

Daryl looks from the crumpled body of the girl to Rick, and there's a jerkiness in the shift of his own vision that's as unsettling as anything else here. And shouldn't it be worse than unsettling? Shouldn't he find it nearly impossible to look at that sad little body? Shouldn't he find it nearly impossible to be here at all?

He doesn't feel crushed. He just feels like sad, desiccated shit.

“Where'd the others go off to?”

Rick shrugs. “Dunno.” He coughs a withered laugh and drops his gaze to his hands where they dangle between his knees, turns them over as if he expects to see something there. A mark. A stain. “Honestly? Right now… I don't think I really care.”

Daryl grunts. This is awful, and whatever. “Ain’t none of ‘em helpin’ out.”

“With what?”

“Gonna have to dig some fuckin’ graves, ain't we?” He gestures around at the bodies and tips his chin at the sky. “Daylight’s wastin’, we gonna just leave ‘em all out here overnight?”

To the extent that such things matter anymore, that prospect seems very wrong.

“Some of ‘em might be off doing that. Glenn, maybe. He.” Rick releases a long, strained sigh and swipes a hand down his face, stopping at his chin. “He cares about that stuff. He cares a lot.”

“Strikes me as the type to care.”

“He is. When we were camped outside Atlanta… We got attacked, almost overrun. Lost some people. Lost Andrea’s sister.”

Daryl arches a brow. Remembers that night in the woods, drawing the words out of her like poison from a wound, and wondering at himself then, that he would bother to try and that the answer would be significant. That she _did_ answer, that it felt like he had only stirred the surface of deep water.

You really don't just almost kill yourself for _no reason._

“Shit,” he mutters, looks away. At the deep green oaks, at the distant gold of the fields. The rest of the world is comfortably oblivious to the hideous things that happen inside its borders.

Rick’s mouth curls into a thin, humorless half-smile. “Yeah. Shit. Anyway, Glenn, he.” Wave of the hand. “Some of us were getting set to burn all the bodies, he insisted on separating them out and burying our own. Blew up over it, a bit. So we did.” He pauses a moment, exhales. “He was right.”

He was. That much is self-evident and unquestionable. Back in Atlanta, the idea would have been preposterous, but Atlanta might as well be another world along with the world unconquered by the dead. That remote, that far-removed. Daryl thinks about it now and it's like a dream. He's only ever been here, surrounded by trees and fields, chasing through the woods after a little girl who was never there for him to find.

It feels far too much like coming home. The wild emptiness, and the futility.

“Gotta bury the little girl,” Daryl says softly. Not that Rick doesn't know this, or needs a nudge in that direction. “The brother. The woman.”

_The woman._

Lying not far from Sophia, her legs folded at an unnatural angle and her body twisted halfway around. An ugly rust-colored stain has spread into the dirt around her head; even the dead bleed. The woman had clearly been dead for a while—but to Beth, that hadn't made a difference. She was walking. She was growling, staggering hungry toward her own family. She would have killed them, devoured them, and Beth faced that fact and didn't look away.

She never would have put that gun to her mother’s head, otherwise. Never would have found the strength to pull the trigger.

He was focused mostly on Carol as the others charged off, on getting her to her feet. But he did see Beth as her sister led her away. Caught a glimpse of that blank, cold face, and it was like something brittle snapped, loud as another gunshot.

Rick nods. “Was her mother?”

“That's what she said. Her brother somewhere in here, too. I wouldn't know him by sight.” So they'll have to drag them back out here—Hershel, Maggie, or Beth—and get them to identify. Pick _our own_ out from the rest.

Once they were all somebody’s own.

“She knew this whole time, too?”

“Yeah.” He grits his teeth; this part feels like an admission. He was so pissed at her, meant every nasty thing he spat at her, but he can't forget how she looked at him with those horrible tears in her eyes, that equally horrible helplessness sagging in every part of her body. She wasn't pleading with him, but only because she couldn't find it in herself to do so. “She was…” _Damn it all to hell._ “I think she was tryin’ to figure out how to say somethin’ about it. Before Glenn did.”

“To all of us?”

“To me.”

And what precisely would he have done, if she had succeeded?

Rick doesn't respond. He gets slowly to his feet, dusting off his hands, turning fully to Daryl and squinting in the sun. Daryl can see his face better now, how drawn and weary it is, how his skin seems to be hanging off his frame. He’s wearing his entire body like an ill-fitting suit, and something twists in Daryl’s gut, because he doesn't make a habit of looking in mirrors, but this is an affect he recognizes. When your body is keeping you somewhere, and the rest of you would give anything in the world to be gone.

“She put down her own mom,” Rick says finally, very quiet. His gaze flits past Daryl and toward the house, from which raised voices stopped issuing a while ago as the world sank into the heavy cicada-humming stillness of a summer afternoon. “That was…” He shakes his head, and Daryl discerns a bit of dull wonder there. “I don't know if I could’ve done that. I don't think I could.”

Daryl coughs, realizes he's gnawing at the edge of his thumb. “You could.”

Everyone can do things they never believed themselves capable of. Right place, right time, there might be no limit. They'll all learn that now, or they'll be taught, and it’ll be brutal either way.

Rick shoots him an unreadable look. “You think?” When Daryl doesn't answer, he sighs and starts toward the house. “I should check on Carl.”

Daryl hesitates. Rick isn't the only one who's yearning to flee; there's nothing else here for him to do, he's done enough damage already, and the wisest thing would be for him to absent himself. There's the hill and the ruined chimney; he liked it there, and it was somewhat removed from everything else, and he might like to go back there. Get his shit and go back there and stay.

But the hunch in Rick’s shoulders and his bent back, and the blankness on Beth’s face, and Carol’s ragged sobs. The pitiful heap of filthy clothes and decaying flesh that used to be a little girl.

He can't just leave this. Not yet. No matter what a sorry specimen of humanity he is.

“I'll come with,“ he says, and his feet carry him forward. “See if someone can tell me where to find a damn shovel.”

~

Maggie has left her.

Beth doesn't remember when she went. She's sitting up on the bed, hands curled in the bowl of her crossed legs, gazing at the window, and what she knows is that she's alone. Only she isn't; this room is full of ghosts, shades she never truly saw until now. She isn't looking directly at them, and that's why she can see them, unobscured by the blind spots in the center of her vision. They flit and dance like moths, beckoning her to see them for what they are. Her books—denser stuff she had to read for school like Joseph Conrad and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and other stuff she read for fun, cute little novels about horses and friends and boys, a couple of paperbacks that barely qualified as horror, and now all of them seem flimsy and stupid, the dense and the light alike. Nothing in a single one of them that matters anymore, and as for the horror…

She had no fucking idea.

The books. Her pictures, a bulletin board collage of them over her desk, family photos on the walls. Vacations, parties, captured moments that didn't seem important even at the time. Her little trinkets, her figurines of unicorns and more horses, that deer and that snow globe, and on her dresser among the big-girl cosmetics sits the music box she inherited from her Nana on her tenth birthday, which, upon opening, plays a suite from _Swan Lake_ as a ballerina pirouettes in place. The quilt and its forget-me-nots. Everything.

Not merely childish. It's all unreal. She can exist among those things, be surrounded by them, but never touch them, and they can't touch her. She slipped out of phase with them, and now she's straddling a liminal space between worlds, half a ghost herself. She was halfway here before, the second she found out about the barn, but today at last she stepped over the final threshold and she can't ever go back.

She's just gone.

From here, she sees everything with piercing, ruthless clarity. If she can't go back, she can go forward, and another threshold is revealing itself through the fog ahead. There are still things she can do, measures of control she can seize. She understands; she gets it now. A nightmare is stalking her, one she’ll never be able wake up from, and it’s only going to get worse no matter what she does. Not only for her, because they're all trapped in it, all equally devoid of hope.

She can't help Maggie and Daddy. She did help Mama. Shawn… Well. And as for the others, they were never her problem.

She supposes she doesn't really have any more problems, except one.

And that one might be relatively easy to solve.

~

When he finds the rose, it's obvious that Carol was here before him.

It's also obvious that she would have the same idea, be driven by the same impulse. It’s absurd to feel resentment over it. Yet he does, gazing at the torn tangle of stems and shredded white petals, the latter seeming to float in front of the shimmering greenish surface of the pond.

This was a gift he tried to give her. It was a poor apology but it was what he had, and he saw what it did to her. For a horrible moment, she did believe. It’s more evidence of his participation in this whole ludicrous business, and he finds himself wondering if any of the impulse that sent her here would have been turned on him, had he been there. If she would have torn his hair, clawed his face, screamed abuse at him for making a fool out of her.

If he would even try to defend himself in that case.

He kneels down in the high, rough-edged grass, his dirty hands resting on his thighs. He's dirty everywhere, more even than usual. Grave dirt. Glenn did end up coming out to help him, along with T-Dog, and together they dug a row of three pits, silent except for the thud of the shovels and their own strained grunts of effort.

The one Daryl dug was smaller than the other two.

Getting on to evening. Mockingbirds are twittering and warbling in the branches that arch over the water. Dragonflies drone sleepily back and forth. Circled bands of ripples expand now and then as fish break the surface, hunting water striders, and it’s pretty and peaceful and all as flat as a movie screen. He has no reason to be here; he should head back. They won't be lingering over the bodies. It’ll be time soon.

He doesn't move. Not for a while.

Apologies are bullshit. _Sorry_ is useless. He won't bother with it again.

~

“They're ready.”

She won't look at him. She doesn't appear to be looking at much of anything, not even the floor of the RV as she sits, hunched, her head hanging between her shoulders. He can't see her face at all except in the outlines of her brow, cheekbones, and jaw in the low afternoon sun breaking in through the windowshades, but what he can see…

She looks old. She looks as old as he's ever seen her.

Time is no longer touching any of them the way it did, and it's no longer moving in only one direction. It's swinging wildly backward and forward, sometimes in multiple directions at once, making them all by turns ancient and beaten down, and weak and helpless. Ignorant. They're all new to this world; they were just born into it. They can barely crawl through it, let alone walk.

He tries again, louder. “C’mon.”

Barely above a hollow murmur: “Why?”

Blink. He's nonplussed. And yet, as questions go it's not a shocking one. Why, indeed?

“‘cause that’s your little girl,” he says softly, and she breathes a laugh and raises her head, still not looking at him.

Her eyes are dry.

“That’s not my little girl. That's some other… _thing_.” She pauses a beat and then she does look at him, her gaze steady. No rage that he can discern. No real grief, either. She looks as flat as the pond did. “My Sophia was alone in the woods. All this time, I thought…” She shrugs. “She didn't cry herself to sleep. She didn't go hungry. She didn't try to find her way back.”

She falls silent again, shifting her focus to the shafts of light and the dust motes dancing in their beams, and as bile scorches his throat he wants to scream. That she _doesn’t know that_. That he found the house, the place where he's absolutely fucking _certain_ her little girl spent a lonely, terrified night, that he found the evidence of the sardines she wolfed down because she was starving and there was nothing else to eat, that he found the doll she must have lost as she was fleeing for her life. That he sensed her in the woods, concealed among the trees and the underbrush, felt her watching him, although she was too afraid to show herself to a strange man with a crossbow. She _did_ cry herself to sleep. She _was_ hungry. As to whether she tried to find her way back…

_You callous fucking bitch, you_ coward, _just because you don't want to believe it doesn't mean it didn't all happen._

“Sophia died a long time ago.”

He stares at her for a long time, jaw working. He doesn't scream. His voice shrivels and dies in his chest, settles in his gut like wet ashes.

At some point he leaves her, and he goes to watch them put her child in the ground.

~

For Otis’s funeral, he stood with the others. Now he keeps to a distance, feels like his own species of fucking coward, seethes in it but doesn't resist it. He should go back to it being not his business anyway, because it never was. Watching them bringing out those three bodies shrouded in clean white sheets, Hershel and Maggie carrying the largest, going back for the next, and finally—and here he nearly looks away—Rick with a small white bundle in his arms.

He moves resolutely, one foot in front of the other, his gaze fixed straight ahead. Reaches the grave Daryl dug and lays Sophia into it, and steps back among his people, his head bowed. His wife lays a hand on his shoulder. He doesn't move, doesn't appear to even have noticed.

He killed her for the second time, that _thing_ that used to be a lost little girl. Shouldn't let that fuck him up too bad. He only did what had to be done. But Daryl is certain now: Rick Grimes is a good man. A tired man, a confused man who doesn't seem able to stop events from spiraling out from his control, and frequently a desperate man faced with desperate circumstances. A man who is probably to some degree fooling himself about the state of the other man who Daryl takes to be his once-best friend.

But a good man all the same.

Doesn't deserve this, Daryl thinks with a surge of sudden, violent anger. Doesn't deserve any of this bullshit. Not that fairness has ever been a feature of reality, but it's true nonetheless. When the horrible thing that no one else can bear to do—not even Shane—needs doing, he steps forward and he does it, and he carries the weight. Carries the girl. When her own fucking mother won't be here for it.

So he does look away then, briefly.

He might have expected Hershel to say something; did for Otis, and the guy seems like the closest thing they have right now to a preacher. But he doesn't. He says nothing. He’s slumped on his feet, supported by his daughter, gazing down at the graves of his wife and son, and to Daryl’s eyes he looks about ready to pitch over any second.

And then, of course, there's Beth.

Not close to her father, or her sister. She's on her own a few feet away from them, a few feet away from all of them, her hands hanging loose at her sides. But her shoulders are straight and back, her head erect, her hair darkened to a deeper red-gold by the setting sun. She's facing this, and she's doing so more squarely than any of them.

Which is how it's always been. Since he found her in the hospital. She's never flinched. She's never turned away from the worst of it.

Except he doesn't think he likes how she's facing this now. It's wrong. Something in her is very, very wrong.

No tears in her eyes, for one thing. The sun is casting itself directly onto her face, and there's no shine in them whatsoever. They're dull as pebbles. She doesn't even appear to be blinking.

Not his business. Never was.

One by one, they fill in the graves and it’s finished. But he never lays his hand to a shovel. He did his part.

He's done.

~

But he does run into her after, one more time.

He doesn't mean to. Pretty sure she doesn't either. Their paths merely cross as the group breaks up and she's headed back toward the house. He’s going to the camp to gather up his shit, after which he imagines he’ll probably wander to the low hill and the ruined chimney and make a place for himself there. But first there's her, and he stops at the same moment she does, and he manages to meet her focus as she tilts her head back and gazes up at him with those weird, dull, unblinking eyes. More than weird; _alarming,_ and abruptly he’s seized by the urge to do something, warn someone of the new disaster he can sense coming, like an animal alerted to an imminent earthquake.

But he just looks at her, and she looks back.

It's almost twilight. Fireflies are beginning to rise out of the grass and flit among the bushes and trees. She glances to the side as she raises a hand and one of them alights on her knuckles, blinking slowly on and off like a Christmas light. Her face is impassive; as far as he can tell, she doesn't feel much about it one way or the other.

He looks from it to her, clearing his throat. This has gone from alarming to surreal, and no, he most definitely does not like it.

“I'm sorry,” he murmurs.

She shifts her attention back to him, lowers her hand and shrugs. The firefly zigzags away.

He wants more than that. All at once it's as if his muscles are trying to wrestle free of his skin. She's not telling him it's okay. She's not telling him she’s okay, or that she will be. He's sorry, _sorry for screaming at you like before, sorry for cussing you out. Sorry I didn't get it. I didn't know how bad it was. I'm sorry I didn't stop it when Shane fucked it all up, I didn't know how._

_Look, it's none of my business and I never even should have come here but I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, can't you just say something,_ anything. _Anything at all._

“You shot Mama. The first time. You did.”

He stares at her. Just short of gaping. He didn't mean that she should say something like that. But as she was at the graveside, there's no anger in her. Only that troubling flatness. She's making an observation; nothing more.

And did he? If he did, did he notice at the time? Could have been anyone; they were all firing at everything they could target, and it was absolute fucking chaos. Anyone could have taken her down.

But it's like she can read his mind, and she gives him a tiny shake of the head. “It was you. I know it was.” She reaches out and touches his hand, only the lightest graze of her fingertips. They feel very cold, as if no blood is making it that far. “Thank you. Even if you didn't finish it, I… Yeah.” She heaves a breath. “Thank you, Daryl.”

She steps past him before he can even begin to formulate a response, but a couple of yards away she pauses and looks back, and though he can no longer see her eyes in the shadows of her face, he doesn't mistake the softness in her voice.

“Thank you for everything.”

He still can't answer. And then she's gone.

Later, much later, he’ll think back to those four words and understand that she was saying goodbye.


	22. the blood crawls to a slow and stops

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With fewer and fewer reasons to stay, Beth begins to turn inward and away from the world. But while she’s caring less, Daryl is caring more - no matter how hard he tries not to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was super happy to get back to Howl, and I’m super happy to get back to this. And man, we’re past the halfway mark of s2, isn’t that something? I do plan to keep this going... well, for as long as I can. Though s3 is already intimidating the hell out of me. So I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all your support and kindness. ❤️

The world splits in half when she stops in the bedroom doorway and sees Daddy with the flask in his hand.

He has his back mostly to her, his head down, all the shadows deep around him in the dreamy light of the beside and dresser lamps. It comes to her that she hasn't seen him with his head up since the barn broke open—which is strange to her in a terribly distant kind of way. Daddy is approaching the official status of _old man,_ she's well aware; not really old, not ancient, but the hair on his head is white and thinning, and the lines on his face are etched deep.

She's stupid, but she's not blind.

But Daddy never actually looked old to her, in the way her mind gives the word meaning. He always stands erect, shoulders back and head high, and his movements are strong and sure. Or they were. Even after he started lying to her and them and everyone, they still were. Somehow they didn't weigh him down, those lies. Now that the truth has burst open on the world like those doors, that weight has finally settled on him, and he feels it the way he should have.

She doesn't feel sorry for him. She wishes so much that she did.

He's standing over a box of her things, Mama’s things, set on the end of the bed the two of them have shared for their daughter’s entire life. More things are piled beside it, and it's fairly clear that they're on the way into the box, not on the way out. A few of Mama’s dresses, white and yellow and patterned in delicate scatters of violets, draped over the glossy brown wood of the bed’s frame. One of her simple Sunday hats, pink-banded. Her box of jewelry—she never had anything especially fancy, but there was a gold locket from her mother, a bracelet of tiny amethysts, a strand of real saltwater pearls. A sweetheart-cut diamond ring that Daddy gave her as a tenth anniversary gift; Mama adored it but reserved it for special occasions, for fear she might damage or lose it somehow.

Her hairbrush, head and handle all inlaid mother-of-pearl. Mama would brush her daughters’ hair with it, when they asked. Which they did. Who wouldn't? Who wouldn't want something so pretty to touch them and make them pretty too?

Beth sets her hand against the doorframe and grips it until her knuckles turn white.

And then there's the flask. That wasn't Mama’s. She doesn't know where that came from. She's never seen it before. Yet somehow it doesn't shock her to discover that Daddy has it, that he kept at least one relic of a life he always claimed to have put behind him. Perhaps he forgot that he had it, perhaps he never meant to keep it in the first place—but she doesn't think so.

Some part of him, for whatever reason, couldn't completely let go.

She's detecting a fact pattern here.

He hefts it, seems to test its weight. Holds it to his ear and gives it a little shake. And then—of course he does, because what else could he do—he rapidly unscrews the cap and brings it to his lips, tips it back. His stubbled throat works as he swallows twice. For a split second there's nothing; then his shoulders hitch, his frame jerking into a spasm as he muffles his cough against the back of his hand.

She watches all of this, and she doesn't feel much of anything in particular. But she does think about it. She reflects on what the world has spent the last couple of weeks teaching her in the most visceral way possible, which is that every ending is also a beginning—and not in the hopeful, romantic way she's always heard it phrased. The world ends, and a new and horrible one begins. The people you love from the very heart of you are gone, and you exist in the cold hell of their absence. Lies are destroyed and then the truth destroys you.

People die. Then they get up and walk.

Shawn’s room is down the hall. She strongly suspects that when Daddy is finished here, he’ll go there next, bearing another box, and he'll try to repeat this sad, pointless performance. He can't put Shawn’s entire room in a box. He can remove the baseball and wrestling trophies, can remove the blue ribbon that the hog Shawn raised won two summers ago, can take the clothes from the closets, rip the Ferrari and Keith Urban posters off the walls. It doesn't matter. It won't make the smallest difference. Will, in fact, probably only make bad worse.

This house is haunted by them, even if they're in the ground.

_Because you wouldn't let them go._

_You wouldn't let it end._

She doesn't wait to see what he does next. She turns away and moves silently down the hall toward her own room, and shuts the door. And she does something else, something she hasn't done in the longest time, and she doesn't even know quite why until later.

She locks it.

~

A strange thing happens then, somewhere in the night.

She goes away.

She doesn't. It's not like being asleep. She's still conscious, still _here,_ and her senses are functioning as they should: she hears and feels and sees the same as always.

It's simply that none of those things matters.

As the sun rises and the day slides into being, she hears: The distant lowing of the cows. The raucous call of a blue jay. The drone of the cicadas. The breeze stirring the leaves outside. Voices. Some outside through the open window, some from downstairs. Agitated, worried. She can pick out some of them—Glenn and Maggie arguing about something, Andrea and Lori in the kitchen, Shane talking to someone she can't identify.

Not him. Not Daryl. He's nowhere to be heard.

She feels: The cool fingers of that breeze stroking across her skin. The tickle of her hair against her ear. The worn softness of the quilt beneath her arms and bare legs; she lay down on top of the covers, still dressed from the funeral in her white lace tee and shorts, and never bothered to change. The rise and fall of her chest as she breathes, the throb of her heart between her ears. Her own life at work inside her, present and active. Persistent. Stubborn.

She sees: The plain plaster ceiling above her, and the thin, almost invisible spidersilk crack running across it from one corner. The ancient fan, the wavy grain of its wooden blades, the dusty blossom-shaped glass covers over the bulbs. The pull chain dangling from its hub, which is swaying very slightly.

All of these things, all this input, and not one fraction of it matters. None of it enters her own personal calculus, the equations constantly running in the background of her mind which dictate what she does and doesn't do. The tickle of her hair turns to an itch; she doesn't scratch. Doesn't so much as twitch. Her stomach rumbles hunger, and there's no question of going down to the kitchen to address it. She won't. Of course she won't.

She's not in the world anymore. She perceives it, but only through the windowpane that's closed across her eyes, transparent but solid. The sounds are all muffled now. The sensations her nerves are transmitting to headquarters are more like the memories of feeling than anything else.

It should worry her, but it doesn't. Somehow it's actually a relief. She's as safe as she can be in the fortress of herself. Nothing can hurt her.

Gradually the thought drifts to her, mostly unformed but cohering as she absently observes a patch of reflected sunlight creeping across the ceiling: This is a test. This is a trial run. She's trying something out, draping it over herself like a dress, turning this way and that in a mirror to see how it suits her.

She's trying oblivion on for size.

~

Pounding on the door. Starts light but rapidly intensifies. Maggie’s voice accompanying it, calling her name, wound tight with anxiety. Maggie is scared. Maggie wants to know what she's doing, wants Beth to let her in. Someone might wonder why a locked door would strike her that way, but Beth doesn't; the locked door will be such a strange thing that it'll be an instant red flag. A silent alarm bell.

She could easily get up and open the door, put Maggie’s fears aside. It would be the simplest thing.

Why? Why should she do that?

She doesn't move. Except she breathes. Every now and then, she blinks.

_Beth. Beth, C’mon, open the door. I know you're upset, you’ve got every right to be, but I just wanna talk. We need to talk._

Inwardly, she rolls her eyes. We don’t need to talk. Beth is just fine not talking. Maggie is the one who needs to talk, perhaps to seek some kind of absolution for her guilt, and if that's what she wants, she's going to have to look elsewhere. Beth is not in the business of forgiveness now. That item is not currently for sale.

Forgiveness isn't worth shit.

Maggie is now slamming her shoulder into the door—or so Beth imagines. She guesses it would explain the force of the impacts. In the far corner of her eye, she sees the door rattling in its frame. The lock is old and probably not robust, and Maggie is strong, and after a moment of this the door bursts open with a sound like a breaking dry branch.

Her name, gasped. Then Maggie’s shadowy form looming over her. Hands on her shoulders, shaking her first gently and then rougher. Light slaps on her cheek.

She breathes and blinks, as slowly as before. It's all she feels the impulse to do.

Maggie is on her own. Daddy is on his own. Beth has done everything she owes anyone and she's finished. If Maggie and Daddy had wanted her to stick around, they shouldn't have left her the way they did—left her with what they said and what they left unsaid even if they physically remained. They abandoned her; it seems only fair that now she should abandon them.

Let them comfort themselves. Maybe they can think up some more lies to do it with.

~

He really should just fucking go.

He's been thinking about it for the last couple of hours, sitting here with his back against the crumbling stones of the chimney. Making bolt after bolt, his knife sliding smoothly down the shafts as he carves away the surplus wood. Practiced, easy movements; he barely has to think about them. The repetitive quality of them allows him to sink further and further into himself, though he's encountering nothing good there. Certainly nothing better than what's on the outside.

No fletching as yet. He’ll work something out. Always has before.

Always works something the fuck out.

What he should work out is his own departure. He should _go_. There's nothing left for him here; it's all gone, all carved away just like the wood. No little girl to look for. Carol is hiding in that goddamn RV, too weak to say goodbye to her own fucking daughter. He thinks about that part and it makes him so angry it's like his gut is on fire and scorching into his throat, like he could vomit magma. Little girl, probably thought everyone left her, no one was looking for her, and then she died afraid and alone, and her mother, her _blood,_ wouldn't so much as see her into the ground.

Instead this stupid redneck asshole was there, so dumb he doesn't have the sense to pack up and get his sorry butt back on the road where he belongs.

And what good did getting Beth here do? What benefit was there to her? She's fucked up beyond belief, maybe fucked up beyond recovery. What Atlanta couldn't do to her, her own home did. She returned to that home on the back of his goddamn bike. Because he was stupid.

Because he was weak. In his way, he's every bit as weak as Carol.

Crows scream in the trees above him, in the fields, a black cloud rising into the air and swooping in a lazy spiral before they settle again, inky pitch nestling into faded gold. He doesn't watch them but he sees, and a word comes to him. A _murder_. They're a murder.

His entire body wrenches, hurts itself into a convulsion like a split-second seizure, and he stabs the knife viciously into the ground, yanks it free along with chunks of packed dirt and shreds of grass, stabs it again. Stares down at it, at the handle wobbling with the dissipating vibration, and feels utterly pathetic.

_‘cause that's what you are, little brother. One thing I’ll say for you, at the end of the day you do got a mighty sharp read on the kinda man you are. Shit, not even a man at all._

He's jerking his head up, mouth opening though he has no ready comeback other than _fuck you, why can't you just leave me the fuck alone,_ when movement in the periphery of his vision grabs his attention and he looks. Woman coming toward him up the slight rise, slender and dark-haired, her arms swinging. Moving swiftly and with purpose. Rick’s woman. Lori.

Wonderful. What the fuck can this bitch possibly want from him?

She stops, breathing a little hard. Staring down at him. He's not looking at her anymore, but he can feel her gaze, and he resents it deeply. Then again, he resents her very presence, so her gaze doesn't make much difference one way or the other.

“Moving to the suburbs?”

There's a sharp humor in her tone, noticeable tension, but he gets the sense she's using the poor attempt at a joke to try to open him up. He can't imagine she thinks it'll work. He doesn't respond; merely pulls the knife free from the dirt and goes back to work on the bolt.

She sighs, and to her credit she does seem willing to give that foolishness up for what it was. “Listen, Beth’s in some kind of catatonic shock. We need Hershel.”

His hand stutters. Freezes. He doesn't look up; the ground is blurring into a gray and pale brown smear, broken only by the darker curves of Lori’s boots. And God help him, he's dismayed to find that the primary thought rolling through his brain is _of course. Of course she is._

He saw her. He saw her eyes. She was receding even then. She was leaving right in front of him, before she ever walked away.

_You gonna get involved in this now, little brother? You ever helped anythin’ before? Anythin’ you done so far been worth a sick dog’s runny shit?_

He grunts, hand returning to its steady motions. “So go get ‘im.”

“We can't. He's gone.” She crosses her arms; he flicks his gaze up to see thin, angular features as tight as her voice. “We think he went to town. Rick went after him hours ago and neither of them’s shown up.”

“So?”

“So I need you to run to town real quick and bring him and Rick back.”

He's not remotely surprised. Knew it was going in this direction, before he ever knew either of them was gone. These useless motherfuckers want something done, it's naturally him that does it. Like he is some kind of dog, hopefully fetching stick after stick. Like he wants some kind of pat on the head.

No more.

“Can't none of y’all drive a fuckin’ car?”

“You can move fastest, you've got the bike.” She shifts her weight, sighs again, and her tension is twisting into undisguised distress, and it's only making him angrier. “Please.” Pause. “ _Daryl_.”

He finally does raise his head and meets her hooded, anxious eyes, flips the knife in his hand—almost a casual gesture, like he doesn't give a fuck one way or the other. Like she's relaying any random fact that has nothing whatsoever to do with him. “Your bitch went window-shoppin’. You want him, fetch him yourself.” He skims the blade roughly down the shaft; it's now too thin to be useable but he trusts she won't be able to tell. “I got better things to do.”

She drops her arms, shakes her head—vaguely incredulous. Which doesn't speak any better of her than her lousy attempt at a joke; what the hell else did she expect from him? Except maybe it was reasonable that she would. It's what he does, after all. Sinks his oar in where it shouldn't be, capsizes his damn boat going after shit that's not his business.

“What's the _matter_ with you? Don't be so selfish.”

And that gets him.

He’d vastly prefer to keep up the facade of not caring. It would be vastly easier if he could maintain this aura of detachment, because if he fakes it long enough, there's always the possibility of eventually making it. But she levels it at him, that word, strikes it home like a punch, and something in him breaks as he surges to his feet, points the shaft at her like he's considering whipping it across her arm. Or her prissy face—and he feels a shiver of nausea.

“ _Selfish?_ Listen to me, Olive Oyl.” _Olive Oyl._ He's actually kind of sourly pleased with that one. “I was out there lookin’ for that little girl _every single fuckin’ day_. I took a bullet and an arrow in the process, don't you tell me ‘bout gettin’ my hands dirty.” He whirls away, kicks at one of the loose rocks, encounters a wave of bitter embarrassment and drops back down onto the larger stone he's made a bench of. Knife, shaft, like they're some kind of defense. Except the shaft is splintering. He’ll have to toss it.

Lori is merely looking at him.

“You want those two idiots? Have a nice ride.” He grits his teeth so hard his jaw pops. “I'm done lookin’ for people.”

For a moment longer she stays there, staring. Staring like a dumb bitch who doesn't get what he just said, or who thinks she might yet be able to come up with something to convince him. But at last she turns on her heel and walks away, back toward the house, and she doesn’t spare him a single glance.

And it's not the relief he would have hoped for.

 _Hoped,_ Merle says, his voice dripping with scorn. _Ain’t that a bad joke. You goddamn right, though, you ain't lookin’ for people no more. Ain't lookin’ for ol’ Merle, that's for fuckin’ sure._

_And that girl? Wherever she's gone, don't pretend you ain't just fine with leavin’ that alone. You better be, anyhow. The fuck you gonna do about it? She wants to be a damn vegetable for the rest of whatever, you let her be._

_Shit, she might have the most sense of any of these morons up in here. More sense than you._

He hears a guttural, bestial snarl rip through the air, and as he hurls the broken shaft away he realizes that it's come from him, raking up the back of his throat. The shaft is too light to even pick up any speed or distance; it yields all the satisfaction of throwing a leaf, and then it falls pitifully into the grass with a soft rustle.

But the movement does startle the crows again, and they take to the air in a sudden cacophony of flapping and rasping, shaking the branches overhead and raining down a shower of spindly juniper needles.

He lowers the knife and bends over his knees, breathing shallowly. In this moment, what he feels for Beth is nothing short of outright envy.

He should go. He should just fucking go.

He already knows he won't.

~

“I’m here, Beth.”

As if that matters. As if that's even true. Beth listens, not with any great interest. Nothing matters, just as it didn't before, and in fact with every second it all seems to matter less. Evening is falling, slow and gentle, and she's sure that if she was outside in it, it would be pretty. The last red-orange stains of sunlight, the fireflies rising out of the grass and lingering in the trees. She would want that, if she still wanted anything. Not to be in this house anymore, which is no longer her home. Under the sky is more a place for her than this ever could be.

Find Daryl, perhaps. Sit with him in silence. He wouldn't try to make her talk. Wouldn't talk to her. He would simply be there, and that would be very good.

But she doesn't want that, because she doesn't want anything anymore.

Maggie is here. Maggie is still talking, and it's wearisome.

“It’ll be okay. Rick’s gonna be back with Daddy, any moment now. He’ll help you.” Flicker of movement as Maggie wipes at her face. She hasn't yet turned the lamp on, and she's little more than a shade. “You know he always knows what to do.”

No. No, he really doesn't.

Cool fingers on her brow, brushing her hair back from her forehead. Inconsequential. She doesn't even care enough about the touch to want it withdrawn. She does wonder, though, whether Maggie is aware of the miserable ludicrousness of that statement. _Daddy always knows what to do_. Daddy pretty clearly _doesn't_ know what to do, not when it truly counts, not when he's being depended on. Not when he has to get it right and make the hard choices, and let go.

Daddy doesn't know what to do. Daddy hasn’t the first clue what to do. Daddy fucks up.

_And you cover for him, Mags._

Not entirely her own voice, there. Or it doesn't sound like it.

Familiar, though.

“I'm not leavin’ you.” _Oh, how I wish you would_. “It's gonna be alright. I'm not losin’ you too. I swear, I won't let that happen.”

And isn’t that the rankest arrogance, for Maggie to think it's up to her. To believe it’s her choice to make, that she knows best. That she knows better than the girl she and Daddy have hurt with their fathomless lying. That she gets to decide now, what comes after—that after this willfully imposed catastrophe of an ending, she has the right to define what this beginning is going to look like.

That she gets to pick the ending a second time.

 _If I want to go,_ she nearly whispers—nearly breaks through the comforting window and renters the world in all its relentless cruelty. _If I want to go, you're not going to stop me._

 _If_. Not yet _when_. Not just yet. But she's beginning to discern which road she's turning down.

She's beginning to glimpse where it ends.

 


	23. turning with the listless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As night wears on and Hershel doesn’t return, Daryl and Beth sink further into their respective darknesses. One of them is paralyzed, while the other moves closer to a choice which will change everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, I finally reached one of the scenes I’ve been most looking forward to writing (bet this won’t surprise a lot of you).
> 
> Not much to add. Thank you as always for your eyeballs and your kindness. ❤️

Daryl has never in his life decorated his own Christmas tree.

Barely ever even had a damn Christmas tree. As a child, he had few enough that he's pretty sure he remembers them all, or at least all the ones that happened after he was first able to form memories to put them in. There was a stretch starting when he was five when they managed to have them three years in a row, but after that it was only a couple of times, and it stopped after his mother burned to death in her fucking sleep, and Merle stopped coming around much, because a lot of semi-okay things stopped after that and a whole new exciting set of horrors began.

So. Maybe he's merely, in the most perverse possible way, making up for lost time.

He sits and surveys his handiwork. His craftsmanship. He could write it off as practicality, as simply something it makes sense to do when you accumulate a bevy of dead animals which you intend to eat, but even now he's not that self-deluding, and not only because his abandoned and possibly dead brother has taken up residence in his subconscious with occasional visits to his conscious perception. He's perfectly aware of what this is. He's morbid, he's being fucking morbid, and this is a surrender to precisely the same impulse that spurred him to string up a collection of walkers ears on a leather thong like grisly trophies.

The world is fucked up beyond belief and he's just going with the flow.

Gutted squirrel carcasses dangling from the branches, swaying gently in the breeze. Blood glistening on their fur, congealing slowly to a crust. He imagines scatters of tinsel, the glow of strands of twinkling lights. Very festive.

He's losing it. He's losing it as profoundly as he was when he lay bruised and broken at the bottom of a ravine and conversed with someone who wasn't there. Losing it as profoundly as _it_ was lost when he wolfed down raw bloody meat and painted his face with the gore, went as feral as he's ever been.

Blamed _her_. Because he wouldn't have been in that situation if it wasn't for her. Because it was all her fault.

What's she up to now? He tips his head back against the crumbling stone and pensively regards the little bodies hanging overhead like furry swords of Damocles, and extremely against his better judgment he tries to imagine her. Stretched out on her bed with her eyes open, staring unblinkingly at the ceiling. Limp, body useless. Features slack. Pale, likely.

She looks like a dead girl.

He squeezes his eyes shut and manages to swallow past what feels like a tumor in his throat. It's not his problem. He did what he owed her. They're square. More than. He's done.

_She's soft and small and defenseless against what the world has done to her, and now she's gone._

His palms hurt, and after a second or two he realizes that he's digging his nails into them with a bizarre ferocity, his fists clenched so hard that they're trembling.

It's nearly full dark now, the waning moon rising over the trees. Waning—but not long past the full, and bright enough that the flicker of movement in the corner of his eye catches his attention and he turns his head to look.

Figure coming to him, striding over grass tipped with silver. He recognizes her by her shape and his gut twists with something far deeper and more pained than anger.

He doesn't want to see her. This is another thing he's done with. Christ’s sweet _sake,_ don'tthese assholes have enough to concern themselves with? Why the fuck can't they just leave him _alone?_

She reaches him, stops. Like Lori—only worse. Lori, he merely resented. Now he's furious, and he picks up his knife and fingers its edge.

It's only after he's been doing this for a silent moment that he realizes how it might be interpreted as threatening.

He doesn't stop.

Also doesn't look up. “The fuck’re you doin’?”

Carol’s voice is low, calm. But at its edges, quavering the slightest bit. “Keeping an eye on you.”

He huffs a laugh drenched in contempt, and it might make him feel a little better. Might. “Ain't you a peach.”

She takes a breath, and he feels her trying to center herself. She's scared now, though he doesn't know what of, but she's casting about for a brave face to put on. Which somehow only stokes the fury higher. “I'm not gonna let you pull away.” Pause. “You've earned your place.”

_Earned_. The fuck does that _mean?_ Like he was trying. Like it was something he was meaning to do. All the ugliest images of himself, the worst representations he's been able to conjure, this pathetic mutt trotting at their heels, tongue lolling hopefully, making himself as appealing as a dog can with its coat patchy with mange and hopping with fleas. Obsequious. Slavish. He’ll do anything they want, accept whatever scraps they care to offer, just so they let him lie within the warmth of their fire and they don't pelt him with rocks to chase him off.

Leaving his own brother to suffer and die alone because a fucking girl asked him to do something for her and he did.

Like he was trying to earn a place by that fire, pitiful but all he deserves, and he has it, and now this craven, manipulative bitch is trying to keep him there. And for what?

For fucking _what?_

When Lori backed him into a corner he lashed out at her, surged to his feet and growled. He does that now, only it's so much worse. He's snarling, baring his teeth with his hackles stabbing skyward. He wants to hurt her, because she's hurting him and how fucking dare she, and if he hurts her bad enough maybe she'll go away and stay away and it'll be better.

So he thrusts himself forward, and he does his best to land every word like a blow. “You spent half your time mindin’ your daughter’s business instead of stickin’ your nose in everybody else’s, she’d still be _alive_.”

Carol cringes. She does it without moving an inch, but it's unmistakable, how everything in her recoils and her face twists with pain. And good. _Fucking_ _good_.

But then she opens her mouth, and it's hell.

“Go ahead.”

Permission. Shouldn't make sense. But what he feels then is horrid recognition, and he recoils himself, whipping around though he's still facing her, turning his inner eyes away. He's every bit as much of a coward as she is. Won't look at this, at what it means.

At where he's seen it before. That look in her eyes, the way they shine not unlike the blood on the fur. The tilt of her chin.

As though she's anticipating the approaching punch and she won't back down.

“Go ahead and _what?_ ” _Like you don't know, you absolute piece of shit._ This is not going well. “I mean, just go! I don't fuckin’ want you here.”

She's not moving. Bitch isn't moving. He can't stop. He's started rolling downhill, crashing like a rockslide headed for a traffic-crowded road, and inside he's moaning with helpless horror and he can't fucking stop. “You’re a real piece of work, lady.” She knows too. She has to know what she's doing and that's why she's doing it and oh my god _fuck her._ “What, you gonna make this about my _daddy_ or some shit?”

He wrestles desperately to drag up some scorn. Might succeed. Might be convincing. He turns in place and that feels pathetic, like he's at a loss as to what to do with his clumsy useless body, which is only the truth. Faces her again and juts out his chin almost like he's about to hit her with a headbutt. Points the knife at her, stabs it at the air.

“You're afraid.” Nothing. Frantically, he tries again. “You're afraid ‘cause you're all alone. You got no husband, no daughter.” He scoffs and it's like claws raking down his throat. “You don't know what the fuck to do with yourself.”

More movement in the shadows. He glances over her shoulder and there's Merle, leaning against a tree with his arms crossed, watching him with what he could only describe as cold disgust. _Really, little brother? You really takin’ this approach? God almighty, you are one bad fuckin’ joke._

And he looks back at her and she's crying.

Silently. Motionless from her features to her fingertips. Tears trickling down her cheeks, and the fury in him is abruptly white-hot and blinding, and part of him, the part that's cowering in a far corner of his mind, lurches from horror into outright terror and yanks wildly at its hair. He's practically throwing his clumsy body forward, as if he'll batter her with it rather than with the words, and maybe that'll work if nothing else will. “You ain't my problem!” None of them. None of them are, why don't they _get_ that? What is it going to _take?_ “Sophia wasn't mine! Shit, all you had to do was keep an eye on her, you stupid fuckin’ _cunt!_ ”

It’s only after she flinches that it hits him, what he's finally done.

_Hits him._

He didn’t. He didn't do that. He would know if he had done that. His fists are at his sides, the empty one and the one curled around the knife’s handle. He didn't raise them. He was just.

God, surely he would know if he broke that bad.

And all at once he's empty. He sags, everything hard and solid in him going to water and streaming through his legs and feet into the ground. He turns away, stumbles, catches himself one-handed on the stones. He's got nothing left, and if she comes at him now, in any manner, he won't be able to stop her.

If only she would. What would that be like? What would happen then?

She doesn't. The world is silent except for the thrum of the cicadas, the sigh of the wind in the treetops and sweeping across the grass. And after a moment, though he doesn't hear her leave, her presence is no longer there, and he feels the air rushing in to fill the space she occupied.

He wanted her to go and she went.

He trusts she can't see him now. It's the only thing he trusts. He angles more fully to face the chimney, braces his other hand over it and leans his brow against the cool crags. For an awful instant he perceives himself rearing his head back and smashing it forward, doing it over and over until his forehead is split open, ragged flaps of skin, and blood pouring down his face and staining the stones.

He doesn't. He doesn't do anything. Of course he doesn't. Of course he can't even be brave enough to get meaningfully dramatic.

He’s all alone.

~

A procession of dead people pass through her room.

She tracks them without moving, without fear or even any particular surprise, and the fact that they aren't really there makes no difference to her. They might as well be here. Then again, they might as well not be.

That's the thing about being dead.

Not all of their passage is by the same route, and not all of their entries and exits are via the same points. Sometimes it's through her door and out the window. Sometimes through the window and out the door. Through the closet and sinking down into the floor, or rising through the cracks in the ceiling like smoke. She watches their movements, how they're unconstrained by the conventions of time and space, and she vaguely envies them their freedom.

They're shades, shadows, fading in and out. Going thin and translucent where the light touches them, opaque and solid where they find the darkness again. She can identify their features, but even those faces she knows—and she doesn't know all of them—are strange. Their eyes are too big, their lips forming the outlines of words unknown to her. It's dreamlike, stopping just short of nightmarish.

Maggie is with her still, seated on the side of her bed, and Lori is standing beside her, gazing down. Beth can't see Maggie’s face, but she can glean her sister’s expression from her tone—wavering a little, curved with a watery smile, the barest edge of hysteria. Maggie is talking about the birth control pills and the pond. Maggie is talking with weepy fondness about the time Beth lied to Daddy, and did so shamelessly and unhesitatingly. She's telling this story as if it's a beloved memory, while she completely overlooks the ways in which it's terrible—that lie, how _good_ Beth was at it, how she effortlessly turned her own wide-eyed innocence to her advantage. She was never innocent. She's always been cynical, albeit blithely so. She smiles and bats her long lashes and to get her way she’ll lie and lie.

Stands to reason. This is her family, after all, this clan of deceit.

She ignores Maggie, ignores Lori. She looks past them and watches her visitation of ghosts. The last few moments have been taken up by people she doesn't recognize for certain but thinks she may have run into at the hospital, their skin sallow and hanging off their bones, their eyes sunken and blank, but now here comes poor dead Karen with the flesh half stripped off her cheek and her neck a torn mess, her dead baby hissing in her arms. She looks at Beth for a moment or two, expression impassive, before she moves on.

Replaced by Becca from school, her jaw slack and tongue loose, torn cut-offs and crop top stained with grave dirt. Jimmy after, his milky eyes rolling and his mouth moving soundlessly; she thinks of a cow chewing its cud rather than a boy speaking in coherent language, and there's something about that that's unutterably sad.

He moves on.

They wouldn't have bothered to show up for no reason. They're all here because they have a point. Which is what?

She briefly closes her eyes, really a fraction of a second’s blink, and when she opens them again, Mama is standing at the foot of her bed, Shawn at her side. Mama’s chest has been ripped open by gunfire, the rotting edges of the wounds a pale purple, the cloth of her dress smeared with brown blood. A good third of her head has been blown out into a pinkish ruin. Shawn is in much the same state, though at least his face too is intact. His shoulder and forearm are missing chunks of flesh where whatever killed him bit into him and condemned him to walking death.

Mama takes a breath, whispers, and washes Maggie and Lori’s voices into silence.

_Sweetheart. What’re you going to do now?_

Beth doesn't sigh. She breathes in and out, steady and slow as ever. _I don't know. I don't know what I can do._

_Yes, you do. Or you know you have to make a choice. You can't just sit on the sidelines, Beth. You have to put one or the other foot down in one or the other territory, and stick with whatever choice you make._

Beth blinks. _How do I think about it? I try and it all falls apart. It's like I keep running into this wall and nothing I do even starts to break through._

Shawn inclines his head. _Half of us are in one place. Half are in another. Where do you think you'd fit now? Where is it better to be?_

_You've seen enough to have the information you need,_ Mama adds. _You've seen enough to be able to pick which way you want to turn. How the record shakes out. Now you just need to make your move. You'll have to be brave, sweetheart, I know. I'm sorry. It's not fair to expect that of you. But you have to be brave where he and she weren't._

Voices, distant. Through the window. The rumble of an engine. She thinks of the night Otis should have come home and didn't, and instead Shane walked in and said little and shaved his entire head, and all of it was somehow very wrong.

Who will come back now? Who will have been left behind?

Maggie is pushing to her feet, hurrying toward the window and peering out, whirling with a breathed Daddy and then she's gone. Lori after her. Beth is alone again.

_You have to choose._

Drifting in this liminal borderland isn't a choice. It's the abdication of one.

She has to return to the world, and then decide if she wants to stay there… or if she wants to go.

She rights herself, sucks in air, rises to the surface. Divers who go down too deep can't ascend too quickly, or their blood boils. She doesn't believe she was down that far, but as she breaks into the light and the air, her muscles seize and she groans, rolls onto her side and draws up her knees as she hugs herself, ignores the aching pull of the IV line in her arm. It doesn't matter. She shuts her eyes against the aggressive illumination of the bedside lamp.

Everything is so heavy. The air in her lungs. The air on her skin. The fact of her persistent survival. Might be too heavy for her to bear.

Maybe she can lay that burden down, if she wants to.

She has to choose. Two branching paths in front of her. They're both littered with jagged stones and lined with brambles, stretching away into trackless wastelands. But along one of them, she can see in the far distance, the brambles die back and the ground smooths out, and the road simply rolls on into a featureless nowhere.

Easy. Contrasted with the other, which she can't see as anything but pain.

She turns and starts to walk.


	24. it’s a road I’ve come upon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth says her goodbyes and makes preparations to go. But one final person wasn’t consulted, and he might have a word or two to say on the subject. Before - and after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here it is, the thing about which so many of you have been saying “I feel weird saying I’m looking forward to it but I’m looking forward to it.” I’ve been looking forward to it too. It’s something I’ve been very thoughtful about approaching, because it’s so important to who Beth is, and it’s vital to get it right. Or as right as I can. I hope you end up liking how I did it. Please let me know, though. 
> 
> This chapter’s title is from the Frames song “Seven Day Mile” which I think could not possibly be any more perfectly Beth’s - and really Daryl’s - state of mind by the end here. It’s all about facing hard choices and struggling to figure out how to live and yeah, it’s perfect. [Here’s the live version](https://youtube.com/watch?v=-Y7a175Ig3g) which is much better than the album version, oh my GOD Glen’s voice.
> 
> Like, if this chapter was the actual episode, it would have closed out with this song. I’m telling you.
> 
> Anyway. As always, thank you for reading. ❤️

Daddy. Daddy comes.

She sits on the edge of the bed and watches him in silence as he first bends over her and then crouches and takes her wrist in his hand. He does this gently, but absently, and as she studies him it becomes rapidly clear to her that easily half of him is elsewhere.

Whatever happened downstairs and outside, it's got people agitated, but she feels little in the way of curiosity. It doesn't concern her. Where Daddy was and the manner and context of his return are irrelevant. What matters—and that barely matters at all—is that he's here now.

To some extent.

With every second, the events transpiring around her are further and further removed from her, and that's without her even going to the deep place she only just now emerged from. She doesn't know the details but she can feel the rising tension, the sense of something winding ever-tighter, and sooner or later she supposes it'll break. Fling people into the air, hurl them against walls and the ground, break them in turn.

But it won’t touch her.

He's pressing his fingertips to the inside of her wrist just below her palm, his lips moving as he counts her pulse. She's uncertain what the point of that would be; isn't it clear enough that her heart is beating? Still. Still beating. What more does he want to know?

Why that beat continues: perhaps so she can be with him now and see him again, and establish without room for error what really remains between them and what's been wrecked beyond repair.

He looks up at her, though he doesn't release her. “They told me you were in a catatonic state.”

She rolls a shoulder. “I'm alright now.”

Said dully. As absent as his affect. _Who cares?_

He nods. And she's actually expecting him to leave it there, but he raises his other hand and cups her face, searching her. It's dawn, and the sun is bright enough to overwhelm the lamplight, throwing his features into harder relief though they're still dreamlike and surreal, the lines around his mouth and eyes smoothing out until he appears almost young again. His thumb strokes down her cheekbone, and in spite of herself she shivers.

He could have stopped this, if he wanted to. He could have saved her.

“You'll keep being alright?”

She shrugs again. That depends very much on one’s definition of _all right._ “I guess.”

“I'm so sorry, Bethy.” He does mean it. There's no question. The words are pathetic, not even remotely close enough to pay the debt he now owes, but he does mean it and he is sorry, and she nearly believes that if he had it all to do over again, he would make a different choice.

But he doesn't have it to do over. No one gets a do-over anymore.

She reaches up, curls her hand around his—tugs it away from her, and rather than resisting he lets it fall. “Is what it is.”

“Yes.” He clears his throat, glances at the door. Whatever lies outside it, it's calling his attention. “Maggie says she was giving you saline but you need to drink now. You need to eat. You're weak and that's no good.”

Why? But she will, for the present. Drink and maybe even eat, because she's still— _still_ —biding her time. Possibly giving the world one more chance to redeem itself, despite the fact that do-overs are no longer a thing. She won't give it long, but when she turns inward the inescapable conclusion is that she's not yet ready, and she won't disregard that. Something so important must be done at the proper time.

So she ducks her chin, giving assent, and he seems satisfied as he gets to his feet. Lays his hand on the crown of her head as if he's giving her his blessing. “Good girl.”

But at the heart of that touch is an awkward hesitation that she's never felt before. He doesn't know how to be around her. He doesn't know what to do with himself. She and her own father: they've become strangers.

A stranger will be easier to say goodbye to.

But before he can go, she does put a question to him, because it could be that she is the slightest bit curious about the raised voices she's been hearing. “Where were you? What happened?”

“Town,” he says, and the single word is evasive enough that she can take it and the flask and do the math. “We met some people, gave us some trouble. Brought back one of them, a boy and he's hurt bad, I need to see to him.”

 _Needs to see to him._ This boy who isn't one of them and is in fact a threat, or would have been, and Daddy needs to see to him while his daughter sits in her room and waits for the right time to die.

Really it's nothing more or less than what she would have expected.

“Okay,” she says softly.

He lingers for another moment, jaw working as if he's about to say something else, then gives her a final parting nod and leaves, and closes the door behind him. And she'd assume that he's doing so simply because it was closed before and it's reasonable to think she wants it that way, but it feels so much more final than that. Like the answer to a question she never asked aloud.

For another moment or two she sits motionless, her head turned toward the window, gazing blindly into the brightening sky.

Her room is empty of the dead. They've left her to herself. Withdrawn to wait.

There's a glass of water by the bed. Her hand trembles ever so slightly as she picks it up and brings it to her lips, the condensation cool and slick against her fingers. She tips it back and swallows, swallows again, exhales when it hits her empty stomach and blooms a heavy cold core in her middle.

Other people will come to her, she guesses. Maggie, bringing her food. Another encounter like the one she just had, which she expects will go similarly and lead her to the same end.

Very well, then. She sets the glass down, folds her hands in her lap and closes her eyes.

She was raised to be courteous. She’ll take her cue in patience from the dead. She’ll wait.

~

But it's not Maggie who comes to her, late in the morning.

It's Lori, bearing a tray. A couple slices of cold pork and a baked potato, and boiled spinach. She looks flatly at it as Lori sets it down on the bedside table. She hates spinach. When she was small, Mama was driven to distraction trying to get her to eat it, until she hit her thirteenth birthday, at which point Mama apparently decided that a teenager was too old to be cajoled and badgered into eating her vegetables and she essentially quit and let Beth clear what parts of her plate she wanted.

Now here it is again. Limp and sickly looking, and, when she scoops up a forkful of it and takes a numb bite, tasteless and lukewarm.

Then again, she can't taste the pork much either.

Lori doesn't leave. She sits and watches Beth eat, as though she wants to affirm that the eating is taking place. Once that would have rankled but now her presence carries the same weight as her absence and Beth eats as if she wasn't there at all. Mechanically, chewing and swallowing, going back for more. Dimly she's aware that she's hungry, and probably for the time being it's better on balance to quiet her body’s complaining.

“We were worried about you,” Lori says presently, low. “Maggie was putting on a brave face, but honestly… I don't know how she was holding it together. I think… Maybe she was afraid you wouldn't come back at all.”

Such blunt honesty. She barely knows this woman. Has nothing against her, and she's always seemed decent enough—and sufficiently brave, when it came to her son, to face some of the questions Rick was refusing to acknowledge. But what bond is there specifically between the two of them? Why is she even here?

Beth looks up, forkful of meat halfway to her mouth. “I did.”

“Yeah. You did.” Lori breathes something on the general vicinity of a laugh and tucks a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “We need people right now. It's not just Maggie, we all need to hold everything together. For each other.” She pauses, her mouth working, and she's transparently attempting to gather herself together, to arrange words in the proper order and release them into the world. And finally she does. Only two of them.

“I'm pregnant.”

Beth blinks at her. The word is like one in a foreign language. It has no place here. It has no deeper meaning. One is not _pregnant_ in a life like this. A new creature could never be a reality. Here there's only death.

The fork descends back to the plate and lands with a soft _clink_. “You’re pregnant.”

Lori nods. She's smiling now, a little shakily, twisted at the edges with worry, but the heart of it is a desperate kind of hope. She wants to be happy about this. She wants to feel good.

Pathetic.

“How could you do that?”

Lori merely gazes at her for a long time. She hasn't moved but her smile has died on its vine and her entire body has gone rigid, as if she's been slapped and she's shocked into motionlessness while her nerves struggle to process what's been done to her. She sucks in a breath, another, and licks her lips, breathing another thing that will have to serve as a laugh—thin and bloodless.

“I don't really have a choice, Beth.”

It's an ugly question. She knows that, she'll more than admit it. But Lori has already asked some of the ugliest questions imaginable. Whether it would be better for her own son to die rather than suffer what's undoubtedly coming to him. Whether it would be better for them all to die and have done with it.

Why should she spare this woman? After all, might she not in fact be in a position to understand better than anyone else here could?

“You really think it'll make a difference?”

Lori shakes her head, but it's not a denial. Or so she likely believes. “Of… of course it will.”

Beth says nothing else. And after a few moments Lori gets up, turns half away, rakes her hair back from her face and seems to shake herself. Yes, she does understand, but she's turned a corner of sorts and she won't accept it. She'll no longer face what she once had the strength to do. She's the same as the rest of them now.

Her loss.

She turns back to Beth, picks up the tray, and goes out without another word.

~

But a few minutes later she returns, and in a quavering voice she demands what Beth took. Without meeting her eyes, without sparing her so much as a look she doesn't deserve, Beth hands it over.

This isn't a fight she cares to have. She's resourceful. She'll find another way.

~

So Maggie comes next.

Lori must have told her, because when Maggie sits down on the bed and takes Beth’s hand, that same desperation is in her eyes. She is, at least, far more present in this moment than Daddy was. She's here and she's reaching out, and she's trying. Grasping. Wanting so much to save someone, because if she can do that she might still be able to save herself.

It's not Beth’s place to give her that kind of reassurance.

“Are you _crazy?_ ” Maggie gives Beth’s hand a shake—angry, but anger only as cover. “What if Daddy finds out?”

Beth smiles, amused. It's not a difficult thing to do, or a strange way to feel. It's perfectly rational. “What's he gonna do? Kill me for committing suicide?”

“Stop being such a brat.” Maggie is angry because it's easier. She's angry because it's not weakness. She's angry because if she's angry, she doesn't have to look inward and confront what's there, because what's there will rip her apart as surely as any walker. “He'd _die_. So would I.”

Beth looks at her. She managed amused; now she manages a sardonic silent _really?_ Because really?

Maggie doesn't appear to have noticed. “This isn't just about you. We all lost Mom.”

And she actually thinks it's going to stop there? She thinks that's the end of it, that if they just try their hardest and _hold everything together for each other,_ they can escape the fate that's been waiting for them since the first dead person got up and walked?

Might as well just go ahead and tell her how it is. This is a carefully considered, rational decision. As it's always been, the math is simple. “We’ll lose each other, and I couldn't stand that.”

“So you just give up?” Maggie’s voice is rising, straining, the muscles in her face working. She has never in her life seen Maggie like this before, cracking underneath the mask—and maybe that's an opening. It might be worth a try, if anything is worth anything anymore. “Seriously, you'd do that to us? To me? Beth, I can’t take another funeral.”

“You can't avoid it.” She pauses, looks levelly at Maggie. Unflinching. “What are we waiting for? We should both do it.”

Eyes wide. Slapped harder than Lori was; Maggie’s hand goes loose, lets Beth’s slip free. “ _What?_ ”

“At the same time. Help each other.” This would unquestionably be the best option. And she's not lonely, because that would imply the weight of consequence and caring, but it would be good to have company. Yes, it certainly would be a very good thing. And the best for them both. Not only efficient, but gentler. If Maggie wants to avoid pain, it's the obvious solution.

“No,” Maggie whispers hoarsely.

“It's hard to do it,” Beth persists. As gentle as her proposition would be, but insistent. She doesn't know it for a fact, but she can imagine. She's seen how easily someone can die, but also how hard it can be. “No one wants to, but—”

“Beth.” Scarcely a breath. All horror. “Please don't.”

 _You came up here, sis. You wanted to talk about it. At least have the dignity to not cry at me._ “We can do it so it's peaceful. Easy. Our choice, and then it would be over.” She extends a hand, threads her fingers through Maggie’s and squeezes. Because the truth is that she still loves her. It's dying, dying as the rest of her does, but there are a few ragged remnants. It hurts to see her like this. But she loves Maggie too much to deny her the truth.

She's better to Maggie than Maggie was to her, that way.

“Or we’ll be forced to do it when the farm is overrun. Because no one can protect us. You know that.”

Not even _him_. And she doesn't doubt for an instant that he would try.

Maggie shakes her head. “That's not true.”

“Who?” She huffs a laugh. “Glenn?” It may be. It may be that Glenn would try as well. But can that be depended on? Can anything? These are not their people. Daryl would, because Daryl is Daryl, but Daryl owes no allegiance to the others, and in the last moment of extremity he wouldn't choose them. But the rest? They broke open the barn, they killed everyone, and the fact that it was the right thing to do doesn't change it. They broke away from Daddy and acted on their own, to defend their own. Which is understandable and she doesn't blame them for it, but it doesn't help her. “Rick will save his family. The others too. We’re alone. You, me, Daddy, and Patricia against a whole world of those things.”

She covers Maggie’s hand with her other, holding it. Cradling. Tender in a way that surprises even her. “I don't wanna be gutted. I wanna go. In this bed, tonight, with you beside me.”

Those two women in their bed in their home, one final union with a gun as officiant, and it was so sad and it hurt so much to see, but now that she thinks back, it was also good. It was even beautiful. Peaceful, easy, and their choice. And they didn't have to lose each other.

They're together now.

It's worth the attempt. But she doesn't truly imagine it'll work. And eventually Maggie gets up, unshed tears glistening in her eyes, and leaves.

So that's the last answer she needs.

~

Possibly they didn’t have sufficient imagination to see this method. Possibly some part of them ceased to care enough to find a way to block her from it. Or was generous to the point of permitting it. Regardless of the reason, it's good enough and it's time, and she stands before the bathroom mirror in the warm light of early afternoon, the little ceramic soap dish in her hand, and stares at herself.

The last time she really looked in a mirror, she saw an older version of Beth Greene, worn and exhausted, pushed to the limit of what she had. That's not what she sees now; what she sees is what she's always seen before. A girl, young and with a soft round doll-face that makes her look years younger than she truly is. She's closing in on seventeen but this is the face of a child, perhaps no more than just past the cusp of adolescence, and the world has yet to assault her the way it will, beat her down until there's nothing left in her.

Is it better to go out looking this way? Leave a pretty corpse? Because she is pretty, she knows it, and the first hours after she gets up and walks won't destroy that completely.

Because yes, she'll turn. She's considered how that might be avoided, and, short of stabbing herself through the eye hard enough to pierce her brain, she doesn't see a way. But she's locked the door and hopefully they'll hear her hisses and growls, and understand what they'll find when they get it open, and be accordingly prepared.

Except Maggie probably won't do it. Won't be strong enough. Neither will Daddy. Lori? She frankly doubts it. Glenn? Perhaps. Rick? Almost certainly. Shane? No question—and she shudders at that thought, of how brutal he'd be.

But there's someone else, and she does hope it might be him. The chances probably aren't good, someone else will likely get to her first, but she thinks about him and about what's in him, and every time she's seen him put down a walker before it's been cold and neat—that neatness is what she hopes for, but maybe he won't be so cold.

He’ll understand the necessity. He’ll understand that he's doing her a favor. Perhaps he won't be too angry with her.

That would be a good thing.

The soap dish is small but thick, the hollowed-out back of a little turtle with a raised and seeking head. She grips it there, fingers folded around its stubby front legs, and she raises it and whips it out and down, shatters her own face into a hundred glittering shards.

They'll likely hear that too, in fact, which means they might get to her before she turns at all. But not too soon. Please, a prayer to a God who isn't there, not too soon. The bathroom is so bright and white and clean, and it seems like a shame to get blood all over it, but she has to do what she has to do. She drops the turtle and searches through the pieces in the sink, searching for the right length and shape—finds it. Running feet outside, and already someone pounding on the door and shouting her name—Maggie.

She's out of time.

Holding her left hand over the sink, she pulls in a breath and slices.

And the world freezes around her.

None of the dead here now, come to wait and watch as she prepares to join them. But someone is here. He's standing behind her, and she feels the warmth of him on her skin, hears the annoyed rush of his sigh. Without effort, she can imagine the heavenward roll of his exasperated eyes. Plenty of times he's showed her that because of something she's said or done.

How strange. She didn't hear the door open.

“The fuck’re you doin’?”

She doesn't turn. In the few pieces of the mirror that remain, she perceives a faint dark blur over her shoulder. She really does not want to explain this to him. She was hoping that he might understand, but she didn't want to have to be around to confirm. Ultimately, she would have vastly preferred that it not be her problem. “I'm gettin’ outta here.”

“Like this?” A fine thread of scorn. “After everythin’? After everythin’ we did, gettin’ outta the city, you just doin’ this now? I drag your ass all this way and you off yourself ‘cause shit gets tough? This how you thank me?”

She grits her teeth. She doesn't owe him. He doesn't owe her and she doesn't owe him. He said it. They're square. The ledger is wiped clean and he has no right to guilt-trip her into more suffering. He has no right to bully her into staying alive. “Screw you. Leave me alone.”

“Make me.” He grunts, rough but not entirely ill-disposed humor. “I ain't even really here, y’know. You're doin’ this, you gotta be a dumbass, but I know you ain't _that_ dumb.” Shuffle as he leans against the door, and in her mind’s eye—the same mind that's generated him in the first place—she sees his arms crossed in an attitude of exaggerated casualness. It's a pose. Beneath the mild scorn he will indeed be upset about this. “Look, you wanna do it, I can't stop you. Ain't no one can stop you. But you shouldn't. None of ‘em want you to, and I don't just mean the live ones.”

Her breath catches in her chest. The glass in her hand glitters as it trembles. Again: what gives him the right? What, does he have some kind of special insight into that? Has he spoken to them? Is he better equipped to know what Mama and Shawn would want than their own family?

Yet it did hit her. Like a punch in the chest, it did.

“They didn't wanna die. You know they probably stayed alive as long as they could. If they was anythin’ like you, they fought like goddamn wildcats. I ain't sayin’ it ain't your right, I ain't even sayin’ it's a chicken-shit move, ‘cause I guess sometimes people do it and ain’t no one got the right to judge. But you know they wouldn’t want you to. You know that.”

He's quiet now. Serious, all scorn evaporated. “Bad shit is comin’ down the pike, for sure. More people’re gonna die. Maybe your dad, maybe your sister. Maybe you. Probably me. All of us, sometime. But you ain't gotta be in a hurry. It ain't gotta be all bad. That's all I'm sayin’.” He pauses. “Maybe you oughta just give it a shot. See how it goes. You can always go through with it later, right?”

Tomorrow is another day.

She looks at that blur. Watches as it wavers and fades. In the lower edge of her vision, the blood is welling, a brilliant red against the white.

Lovely.

The light. The blood. The gleam of the mirror. The clean white tile, bathed in sunlight. The sun is still coming up every morning, and sure, maybe it doesn't give a shit about her or any of them because the world doesn't give a shit either, but did the world ever do that? Did it ever care?

Has anything truly changed?

Outside that window is a fine, lazy summer afternoon on land she feels in her bloodstream, in that very blood that's dripping onto the clean tile floor—land she loves more than she knows how to say. Home. Just as it's always been. It's still beautiful. It's all still beautiful, and death was ever part of it, and merely because there's more of it than there used to be… And she was always going to lose people. She was always going to hurt, and she was always going to die.

Doesn't mean none of it is worth anything.

She drops the glass and presses her hand frantically over the wound, sobs rattling her throat, and just as the door bursts open halfway off its hinges she turns to greet Maggie’s stricken, terrified face, before that face and everything else blurs away in a flood of tears.

“I'm sorry.” She hiccups like a little kid, holds out her bleeding wrist. _Help me._ “I’m so _sorry_.”

Flurry of movement as Maggie fumbles for a towel and jams it against her wrist, and with her other arm she's pulling Beth in and holding her close, holding her so tight, tears wet on Beth’s temple as she whispers that it's okay, it's all going to be okay now, no one’s going to be mad at her, _I’m not mad, I’m not gonna let you go, Beth, I swear, I'm not ever gonna let you go._

She will, is the thing. Or Beth will. They all will. One way or another, they're going to have to let go. They're going to have to find a way, no matter how unfair it is, no matter how much it hurts. That's the task now, the one lesson above all others: To live in this world, you have to learn to let go when it’s time, and hold on not a moment longer.

But you can't learn that, can't learn anything at all, if you aren't alive.

~

Could be that they want to encourage visitors, could be that they don't feel her privacy needs to be protected, and could just be that she wanted it that way, but regardless, her door is open, and he stands in it for a few minutes before he clears his throat to announce himself.

Gazing at her.

She's lying on her side, turned away from him, the quilt pooled at her waist and her body small and slight both beneath and above it. The evening sun is streaming in between the partially drawn blinds and painting itself in stripes across the bed, alternating her hair in bands of ruddy gold and dusky blond. Her hair itself lies spread out over the pillow, loose much like the rest of her. From the pace of her breathing, he suspects that she's not sleeping, but every part of her is relaxed.

She's all right.

Her left hand is softly curled on the pillow by her head, her wrist just visible. The white bandage around it.

It's not as if he didn't know. A farm like this is a small town, and even though no one came to tell him directly, the news—as with Lori’s pregnancy—got to him via osmosis if nothing else, information gleaned out of the very air. So he didn't come here unawares and this isn't shocking.

Yet it rocks him back. He's reeling. He grips the doorframe and bites at his thumb, and he nearly turns and creeps back down the hall like the fucking lump of chickenshit that he is—and she turns her head and looks at him, meets his eyes with piercingly clear blue.

Self-possessed and utterly unafraid.

“Hi.”

He grunts, gives his thumb one more ruthless bite and drops his hand to his side, ducks his head. “Hey.”

He left her. Part of him is insisting that he didn't do this, it wasn't his fault, she was far less his problem than Sophia ever was—who wasn't his problem at all—and if her daddy wasn't here to take care of her when she lost her shit, that was hardly anything he could have helped. Whatever happened to her, whatever she did, that was between her and her family, and if her family failed her, well, that was their business.

But he left her. He did that. Gathers that they did that too. Everyone left her, whispers another and much smaller but far more relentless part of him. The people who loved her didn't love her any less, but they checked out, immersed in their issues, and she was on her own.

Stepped up to the edge, looked over… and backed away.

No one was there to save her, so she saved herself.

 _I'm sorry._ He doesn't say it. Somehow, he doesn't think she would receive it well.

“Y’alright?”

She nods. “I'm fine.” Fine. People might disagree on matters of dialect and connotation, but it's his understanding that for most people, in the hierarchy of personal wellbeing, _fine_ rates subtly above _all right._ Not quite _good,_ but honestly, better than a girl who lost half her family and barely hours ago tried to kill herself has any right to be.

But he doesn't think it's hyperbole, or bravado. She means what she says.

Always has.

He grunts again, ducks his head again, and leans against the doorframe. _Again, again_ —repetition, falling back on what he knows, no matter how inadequate it might be. “Good.” Pause. “Just wanted to, y’know. Look in.”

“Here I am.” She smiles faintly. “I'm not goin’ anywhere for a while.”

That could mean any number of things, and possibly every meaning is present here. He wouldn't discount it. “You gotta stay down?”

“Only tonight.” She glances at her wrist. “I didn't bleed a lot. I can be up and around tomorrow.” A grimace flashes across her face. “It just hurts. Hurts more than I thought it would.”

“I cut my arm once,” he says, and feels hopelessly stupid. This isn't the worst context in which one could try to place oneself along closely averted catastrophe, but it's got to be up there. Still, now that he's started. “Skinnin’ a rabbit. Knife slipped, sliced me open real bad. Hurt like a sonofabitch. Thought I was gonna bleed out all over the damn kitchen floor.”

She might have taken offense. But she doesn't. She isn't. Her eyes are lighting up with interest, that smile reduced but playing around the corners of her mouth. “I guess you didn't.”

“Nah. Dad just came in, gave me holy hell for gettin’ blood all over. Like he never did it too.”

“People in your family do a lotta bleedin’?”

He shrugs. “Huntin’ family.” Hunting, and not much in the way of either refined manners or housekeeping skills. Yet he doesn't expect her to judge, even though he continues to leave the majority of it unsaid.

“Oh. Right.” She yawns, only partially covered by the back of her hand, and he pushes upright and turns.

“I'll let you get some shut-eye.”

“Daryl?”

He pauses, glances back and feels a ripple of trepidation. It's not that he thinks she's about to visit disaster on him, but she's prone to tossing him curveballs, and he's even less in a mental place to handle them than usual. “Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

He raises a brow, somewhat relieved. Though it's still odd. “For what?”

“I dunno.” A smaller smile, quirked with humor. “Stuff.”

“Right.” He breathes a laugh and turns again. “G’night.”

“G’night, Daryl.”

No one knows he's here, and he'd like to keep it that way. When he steals out of the house he's pretty sure he does so undetected, melting into the oncoming twilight and striding away through the field back toward his camp. Where the squirrels have been taken down, properly skinned and cooked in a parody of civilized behavior.

Would she have judged him, last night? What he said and what he did?

He can't imagine she would have been impressed with him. But perhaps that's not quite the same thing.

He looks back once and only once, halfway there, at the lights of the camp. The RV, the tents, the difficult and powerfully uncomfortable conferences that they'll be holding now. He heard about Beth and Lori; he also knows about the kid they brought back, and he gathers that's a whole new burgeoning problem.

It's not his.

_You really expect things to stay that way?_

He sighs, resigned. No. No, he doesn't.

But she's not gone. He's a shitheel for sitting on his ass while she almost died, he gets that when he sets aside the nonsense about what is and isn't his thing to worry about. But it isn't gnawing through his gut the way it might have, and he suspects it has more than a little to do with the smile she gave him, with the way she said _g’night_. And _thanks_.

She's not gone. She's here. Whatever his place in the larger schema is or isn't, she's here, and she's not angry with him. She was treading far more dangerously on the raggedy edge than he ever was, and she chose to try again.

He's been a miserable bastard. But perhaps this is a sign. She chose to try, and perhaps even he can do the same.

Perhaps it's worth doing.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you might have noticed that Andrea didn’t end up making an appearance. I actually planned for the scene between her and Beth to unfold in basically the same way, but as what would have been her scene was approaching, I realized that it didn’t feel right. One of you - I’m terribly sorry, I’ve forgotten who - mentioned that this little side plot was really more about Andrea than Beth, and I think that’s correct; I believe that Beth was initially never meant to be more than a tertiary character, and only much later did this moment in her life become so important, as her character itself became ascendant in importance. But the way it was written, it was more about other characters than her.
> 
> This story has a lot in common with canon, but clearly it’s not quite following canon’s course, and this is not at all s2 canon’s Beth. She’s tougher and more mature, she’s seen and come through a lot of shit, and it felt to me like the choice really did have to be hers and hers alone. No one gave her permission for any of it here. The will to die - and to live - had to be entirely her own. 
> 
> Anyway, like I said before, I hope you like how this worked out. ❤️ I know a few of you were hoping she wouldn’t attempt suicide at all, but I really did feel that it was a precipice she had to stand on the edge of. She had to take control of her life by choosing to continue that life, and she couldn’t do that without being faced with the choice in the most immediate possible way.
> 
> Oh, and you might have noticed that I’m not precisely following the timeline of the show. Some of that is for convenience, but some of it is actually that, while I do like s2 a lot, in my opinion it’s paced very oddly and a tremendous amount of stuff is so densely packed into such a small span of time that I frankly find it strains credulity a bit (this is a problem the show has continued to suffer from). So I’m stretching things out a little. Possibly too much, here and there, but I’m guessing few if any of you care, so consider this just another BTS note.


	25. what is it we don’t do well enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl has a talk with the group’s prisoner - which doesn’t go well, and any remaining conviction that he doesn’t have to get involved with any of this goes right out the proverbial window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No notes at this point, except to say that some fun and unexpected twists on the source material happened in this chapter and I’m pleased about them. ❤️

Truth be told, he's not entirely sure what the fuck he's doing in here. 

The _not my problem_ refrain is becoming comical. He knows this. He's self-aware enough to know it. Yet he can't shake it. It repeats over and over under everything, like the drone of a hive of stupid and belligerent wasps, or the most repetitive part of a bad earworm song. It's his problem. It's all his problem. The _not my problem_ exit was miles back and there's no place to make a U-turn—and he's mixing his metaphors pretty badly now, and none of that does anything to shed the faintest light on what he's _doing_ in this fucking barn with this kid cowering before him, features thrown into hard relief by the shaft of sun that strikes them.

They wanted someone to talk to the kid, and he volunteered. Heard what they were up against, and wanting to talk to the kid seemed like the reasonable move. But now that he's standing here face to face with the full implications of what he's agreed to, he thinks he might understand some of his own reasoning a little better.

Rick wasn't coming in here. Might have if his back got jammed up against the wall, but he was practically squirming, his discomfort beyond evident. Not particularly good at hiding his feelings, Rick isn't. Glenn and Dale and T-Dog, no way; if anything they're more squeamish than Rick. Dale especially seems uneasy about the whole business. Andrea, possibly, but he doubts it. Carol—

He still feels like shit about Carol, but oh well.

That leaves Shane. And the truth, the real truth to be told, is that the idea of Shane being left alone here with this frightened—although admittedly dangerous—boy makes him positively queasy.

Because Shane wouldn't waste time trying to be reasonable. Shane would jump right to good old fashioned _enhanced interrogation._ And the ugliest part, the part that fills him with plenty of his own unease under the queasiness, is that he's pretty sure Shane would make that jump because he'd enjoy it, and he'd stay there longer than he needed to.

The kid presents a sizable problem. But it's worrying, how no one seems to quite grasp the problem of Shane.

Which is his problem. Because they all are now. And he lugged every one of those problems in here on his back.

He sighs, crosses his arms. Possibly this can be settled without anything _enhanced_ to any degree. He would vastly prefer that. “So you gonna talk to me?”

The kid swallows, makes an awkward head movement somewhere between a nod and a shake. “I don't know nothin’. I don't have nothin’ to tell.”

“Said you went to school with the older girl. Maggie.”

“Yeah, well. I do, I did, but.” Another swallow. Fairly obvious that he doesn't have much moisture to swallow with. “I'm not gonna… I don't know why they think I'm gonna run off and say somethin’, I swear I'm not. I _swear_.”

Daryl lowers himself into a crouch, and his stomach sinks further than that. This is not going to be as easy as he was hoping, he can already see it. The kid is scared, sure, and frantic to save his hide, but he's also being cagey, a flicker of something less than forthcoming behind those wide, innocent eyes. The fear isn't an act, and he might not even be lying—for now—about his intention to keep his mouth shut, but the rest…

There's shit here the boy doesn't want to say, doesn't want to let onto, and that's no good.

“Guys you was with, they was bad news. Tried to kill some of ours.” _Ours_. He tips a finger at the kid. “You tellin’ me the others ain't gonna be a problem again? You can swear to that? Especially after we killed some of _theirs?_ ”

Another vehement shake of the head. And that's what kicks him further into doubt, because is that level of vehemence really warranted? Can he really be that sure? Looking into his eyes, those wide, scared eyes, and he's looking at someone who will say absolutely anything he thinks will get him out of this.

Which is understandable. But.

“You got us in a bad place here. Best you can do is be straight with me.” He pauses. Lets the kid sweat for a moment. Then: “Who are they? Where they come from?”

“I dunno. I.” Soft little whimper, and Daryl really does almost feel sorry for him. “I didn't know those guys. I just met ‘em on the road.”

“How many?”

The kid blinks, uncomprehending—or seeming to be. That flicker hasn't left him. “What?”

“How many?” Allowing his impatience to show. He _is_ getting impatient, but it's not a bad idea either way to ramp up the pressure, and an impatient man might do something unpleasant to vent it. “In your group, dumbass. How many are there?”

“Oh. Um.” The kid sucks in a breath, and his boots scrabble against the packed earth and straw, which seems to hurt him, and the breath sharpens into a wince. “Thirty. Yeah. Thirty guys.”

Could be true. A safer lie might be to downgrade the numbers, make them seem like less of a threat. Or upgrade to make them seem more intimidating. Or give the exact correct number. Impossible to say for certain. Better to move on for now.

He leans closer, and his hand is creeping toward the knife at his hip. The kid’s eyes track it. “Where?”

“I don't… Man, I dunno.” And a small yelp bursts out of him when Daryl draws the knife and slides the tip idly across the ground. “We were never anyplace more than a night.”

“So where were they last you saw ‘em?”

The kid licks his lips. All at once the flicker is a glint. Daryl fights back another sigh; he's either not going to say, or he's going to lie, and holding back on this specific piece of information is disconcerting. Because he has several very good reasons to pass along that info. “You shouldn't go after ‘em. Just—”

“Who said we was gonna go after em?” He pushes to his feet, gets some height, and moves closer, fingering the blade. “You sendin’ out some scouts? Gonna move on outta here? Or plannin’ to stay local?”

“I don't know. I don't know, man, please, just put that thing away, you ain't gotta do that. You ain't. Please.” Nearly gibbering now, except gibbering is a convenient cover. Stop making much sense, and one might give up rather than escalate. Or take pity on him. And he is for _sure_ fucking pitiful.

“You tell me what I wanna know, I put it away.”

“I'm tellin’ you!”

“You ain't told me _shit_ and we both know it.” He’s looming over the kid now, turning the knife over and over in his hands. Displaying it. Hoping, if he's honest, that he won't end up doing more than that, but his gut sinks lower; he's suspecting this boy might actually be stupid enough to push. “Where?”

“Outta town. A ways… One of the other farms, they were camped out there. But they won't be there,” he adds hastily. “Look, just—”

Swift crouch and the knife is jammed point-first into the hollow between the kid’s collarbones. Hard enough to sting, though not to break the skin, and he yelps again, tears shining in his eyes. “No, no, man, I'm trying to cooperate here.”

“So fuckin’ _cooperate_.”

“Okay. Okay, you gotta know… They're armed. They got heavy stuff, big. Automatics. But I didn't know ‘em, I didn’t—”

“Bullshit.” The knife inches upward, stopping right below his adam’s apple, and the kid stiffens, panting. “You was there, you lying prick. Your boys shot at my boys, they wanted to kill ‘em, take this farm. Said they made that _very_ fuckin’ plain. You just along for the ride? You tellin’ me you had no part in that?”

“I didn't! Yeah, I was there, but I couldn't—”

He bares his teeth, measured between a sneer and a snarl. “You tellin me you're _innocent?_ ”

“ _Yes!_ ” Every muscle in him is rigid, strained, on the edge of panic. _Please,_ Daryl thinks wearily. _Please spill it so I can get out of here because this was such a mistake._ “These people took me in. Yeah, they got weapons, but they're…” He exhales when the knife lets up the smallest bit. “It's not just those guys. It's a whole group. Women, children… Like you. I was on my own, thought I'd have a better chance with them. You get that, right?”

And he is starting to crack. Daryl rocks back on his heels, straightens. Doesn’t put the knife away, but he'll make some space, enough room for the kid to start talking now that he's started. There's something about that pressure, the way his face is contorting—it's not merely the pressure being exerted on him from outside. There's something else inside, pushing to get out.

Curious.

“Maybe I do.”

“‘cept…” His eyes are unfocusing ever so slightly, his gaze drifting past Daryl into the shadows of the barn, landing on something that isn't there, and ice creeps up Daryl’s spine, because whatever is coming, it's not good. Not a story the kid wants to tell. Yet he's telling it, perhaps because he can't not. “We'd go out, scavenge. Just the men. One night we found this campsite. A man and his daughters. Teenagers, right? Real young.” He pauses, tongue sweeping across his cracked lips. “Real cute.”

 _No._ Oh, no, no, he doesn't want to go here. That ice is melting into heat and beginning to smolder red, pulsing at the periphery of his vision. This is not what he signed on for when he took on this job. Not that any of this is anything he ever would have signed on for in his right fucking mind, but if he hears this, if that red haze spreads…

_Boy, you are erasing all my options._

“Their daddy,” the kid murmurs. “He had to watch while these guys, they…” His gaze abruptly snaps into focus, returns to Daryl, clings desperately, and it's beyond pitiful. Beyond pathetic. It's disgusting. Bile is surging into his throat, scorching the lining. “And they didn't even kill him afterwards. They just… They made him watch as his daughters… And they just left him there.”

He's not positive what's happened to the knife. He only knows it's not in his hand anymore. Which is very good, a remaining sane part of his mind observes, because if it still was, this might turn very, very bad.

But there's nothing else he can do. This is too much to stand. It's not his problem. It's not, except it is, a great big quicksand pit of _Problem,_ and with everything he learns it simply gets worse.

Cleared throat from behind him. He doesn't turn. He knows what he’ll see, hanging back in the shadows and surveying him with chilly, cruelly evaluating attention.

_So what if you was in his place, little brother? You know we'd have ended up with a bad crowd, we always did before. What would you do? Stop it? Bunch of guys, guns, out to take what they want just like you've seen a thousand times, but you'd throw your sorry carcass in front of ‘em, be the hero? You ever done that before? You'd start doin’ it now?_

_Just along for the ride? Thinkin’ you're innocent?_

He would never. No. Never that. He wouldn't. Can't prove it, can't put himself in the kid’s place now, but this lying sack of shit is in front of him, this piece of scum who at _best_ simply _watched,_ and he's advancing, stalking forward with his fists clenched as the last of the darkness and the light vanishes, subsumed beneath the red.

He wanted to come in here so Shane wouldn't. Because Shane would lose it and go too far.

“I didn't do it!” The kid squeaks, cringes against the wall as best he can with his hands bound. Curling himself into a loose ball, knees attempting to block his gut and crotch, shivering all over, and that only stokes the fire into a blaze. A fiercer shaft of sunlight hits Daryl’s face and it's blinding, and it's fine. He doesn't need to see. “I didn't touch those girls! I swear, you gotta believe me! I'd never do somethin’ like that, I wouldn't—”

Cut off with a punch to the jaw and his head snaps sideways as his teeth _clack_ shut and a pained grunt jerks out of him. Again and he crumbles into the dirt, trying to go fetal and crying out when Daryl kicks him in the stomach. Again. It doesn't feel good. It feels awful. With every blow it feels worse, and seizing the kid by the hair and yanking his head back so he can slam a fist into his eye is a miserable thing, and for a split second he thinks he actually might cry.

Those girls. The men, and those girls, and this kid.

This fucking kid.

Beating him to a bloody pulp now isn't going to make any difference. It doesn't matter whether or not he's telling the truth. None of it matters. The blood doesn't matter. The screams don't matter. Maybe he comes back to this in the end, always, because it's what he is, trying to crush a boy’s balls with his heel, sick with the highlight reel his imagination has thrown together and is now unspooling behind his eyes, a real world fucking premiere of horror.

_You'd have stopped it if you'd been there? You'd have been the hero?_

_You sure, brother?_

Merle is watching him in silence. Merle isn't smiling.

~

He manages to get most of the blood off himself. Off his skin, anyway. Wipes it off his face and neck with his bandanna, which he stuffs back into his pocket. His knuckles are split and there's not much he can do about that, but spurred by some urge to be presentable in front of these people, he does what he can while the kid lies slumped against the wall, racked with quiet, broken sobs.

Daryl doesn't look at him. It's because he doesn't want to. Not because he can't.

Outside the sun is freshly blinding, and he stops in the doorway, squinting. They're all gathered near the camp beneath the trees, standing around like people who haven’t been doing much but standing around for the last hour, and they're all turning to regard him in tense silence as he starts toward them with one hand curled around the strap of his bow like he's holding onto…

Not an anchor. Anything that will hold him together. Hold his guts in. He didn't throw up but vomit is sour on his tongue.

He ignores the rest of them when he reaches them. Feels their eyes on him and doesn't meet them. Again, it's merely because he doesn't want to. His gaze is fixed on Rick, on Rick’s tight shoulders and tight mouth, and staring into the man’s face, he already knows what they've decided.

And he feels sicker.

 _This is your problem. You_ made _it yours._

“Boy there’s got a gang. Thirty men. They have heavy artillery and they ain't lookin’ to make friends.” Short and clipped. The essential details and nothing else. Surely he doesn't owe them more than that. “They roll through here, our men are dead. And our women—”

He does look past Rick, then. Only the quickest glance over his shoulder, and Beth is next to Maggie at the edge of the assembly, almost pressed against her side, her eyes huge and blue and glancing back at him as Maggie herds her away. Wrist bandaged. She's small, as small as she was in bed last night, and her bare arms and her collarbones and her neck are so delicate, and the fact that he knows just how strong she truly is doesn't alter those things.

_Teenagers. Real young. Real cute._

“Our women are gonna wish they were,” he finishes softly.

“Jesus.” Dale; he turns to the man, and clenches his jaw when he sees him shift his focus from Daryl’s hands to his face. “What did you _do_ to him?”

“Had a little chat.”

Rick uncrosses his arms and releases a hard breath. It seems to take something from him when it goes, his back bending minutely and his shoulders briefly loose, and his lips are pulled into a thin, unhappy line. “No one goes near this guy.”

“Rick.” Lori, voice low. She has to know too. There's no way his own wife doesn't know his mind. “What’re you gonna do?”

And this, this really _isn’t_ his problem. He stepped in, did his part. Did more than his part, and this is not his choice to make, and the nausea is still settled comfortably in the bowl of his belly, churning away. He lifts the bow higher on his shoulder and steps past them, pushes between Glenn and T-Dog and under the burning weight of the sun, and doesn't look back.

Doesn't look at her. He can't. He’ll own that. He doesn't want to, not with what his sick fucking brain is throwing up, and he also _can’t_.

_They made him watch._

_You'd have been the hero?_

But he doesn't walk away fast enough to keep from hearing it, learning one more thing that sucks him down into the depths of this completely unexpected and inescapable hell.

_He's a threat._

_We have to eliminate the threat._

~

He also doesn't walk fast enough to keep Rick from catching him a few minutes later.

Not catching him, exactly. It's more of an interception, an approach from the side that he can't escape without things getting even more awkward than they already are. And Rick has a new expression fitted over his discomfort, one that defies easy categorization but is more open, _seeking_ somehow, actually in the vicinity of hopeful.

Oh, no. The asshole is looking for someone to back him up. Make him feel better about what he's already determined to do.

Daryl halts and waits for him, and feels tired.

“Hey.” Rick halts and stands as if he's not entirely sure what to do with his body, especially his hands—which find his hips, and while it's a stance he's seen Rick take before, it now looks as unnatural as any other one he might adopt. Daryl surpresses the perverse urge to laugh.

“What?”

“You heard back there.” Rick jerks his thumb toward the camp, where Lori and Carol and Dale appear to be making a valiant attempt to go about their day. Christ knows where the others have gone. “What we’re gonna do.”

Daryl ducks his head. “Yeah. Gonna kill him.” He shrugs. _In fact, Rick, it seems more like something_ you're _going to do._ “Sounds like you had that figured before I went in there.”

“I was thinking we'd probably have to.” Rick stops and briefly lowers his gaze to his boots, the grass, the clods of rich brown soil visible among the blades. It's a lovely day. Birds singing and everything, not a care in the damn world. “What do you think?”

“Me?” He huffs, looks away at the chimney, a squat pale tower in the distance. Where he would very much like to be for the rest of the day while they go through with this thoroughly nasty business. “Don't matter what I think, you already decided.”

“You were in there with him,” Rick persists. “You heard what he had to say. Hell, you're one of the people most qualified to _have_ an opinion at this point.”

 _And I can't even begin to tell you how much I don't want to._ “Woulda figured you'd be more interested in what Shane thinks, was you and him took the kid on that road trip the other day.”

“I already know what Shane thinks. I'm asking you.”

Fuck it. He doesn't even know what he thinks. He thinks that this is all bullshit. He thinks that he shouldn't be here. He thinks that it doesn't matter what he wants or doesn't want to do, because sooner or later he finds himself _doing_ shit and it's universally dumb shit that never makes anything better. He thinks that barely twenty minutes ago he beat a boy nearly unconscious because there wasn't anyone else there to beat.

He thinks about Beth’s eyes and that bandage on her wrist and how small she was lying in bed, and he thinks about what those twisted motherfuckers would do to her if they—

No. That is one thing he won't think about.

“I think you don't got a lotta room to maneuver,” he mutters, looking away again. “Think you ain't got much of a choice now. That's what I think.”

For a long moment, Rick says nothing. And Daryl stands there, his gaze stubbornly locked on the middle distance and his intestines trying to crawl down his legs, and God help him, he waits to be released.

Finally, a nod. “Yeah. Alright.” Rick releases a sigh and scrubs his hand over his stubbled jaw. “We’ll do it later today.”

Grunt. “Whatever you gotta do.”

_Just leave me the fuck out of it._

“Alright,” Rick repeats. “Thanks.”

That must amount to a conclusion to the conversation, but as Rick is turning away, of course Daryl’s big mouth has to open up and insert itself into the works. Of course it does. Every move he's made has been a questionable one, why start being smart about this now?

“Some of your people don't like it.”

Rick lets out another sigh and glances back. “No. Lori’s not wild about it.” He pauses. “Dale hates it. Wants the day to try to get more of us on his side. So you might be hearing from him in a while.”

Great. Daryl rolls a shoulder. “Don't see him changin’ my mind.”

“I don't think he's gonna change anyone’s mind,” Rick says quietly, and inclines his head in a half-nod. “Anyway. Thanks.”

He makes his way back toward the house, his slightly bowlegged strides long and swift, and Daryl watches him go. Even odds he's intending to talk to Hershel, and even better odds that he's intending to get Hershel on _his_ side. Or try to. He won't be satisfied with Daryl to cover his conscience, oh no. He's nowhere near as solid in this as he's trying to make himself believe. He’s still fighting with himself over it, and the fight is getting dirty.

The thing is that Rick Grimes is not a bad man. Daryl thinks he might indeed be a very good man. And this is not a world for good men, any more than it's a world for cute young teenagers.

_Might be a world for you, though. Yeah, you might fit in just fuckin’ fine._

“Fuck off,” he growls, and returns to his camp.

 

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to say, I always found the torture scene somewhat out of character for Daryl - not that it went where it did, because I can completely see him cracking when he learns what he learns, but that he would start out so intense (though in fairness we didn’t see what happened when he first began the interrogation). So, especially given that I’m dealing with a slightly different Daryl here, I wanted to rewrite it in a way that I felt matched better with who he is.


	26. I did denounce this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Randall’s execution draws near, Dale does what he can to stop it - including by appealing to one of the unlikeliest people. But he’s not the only one trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blah blah the world is horrible, have some fic. 
> 
> ❤️

The barn has taken on all of the qualities of a haunted house in her mind, something to be avoided or hurried past with breath held if avoiding it is impossible. She's already determined to refuse any chores that might force her in that direction. She's been idly considering what it might be like to burn it down.

Yet here she is. And hell if she really knows why.

Unless it's pure perversity. Since she decided not to die, she's begun to feel as if everything she does is running directly counter to the workings of the universe—as if the choice to stay alive in a world full of the dead has set her irrevocably at odds with it. The barn is hateful, representative of everything she has every reason to fear, and also she's been explicitly instructed to keep well clear of it. So of course here she is. How was she ever supposed to be anywhere else?

Andrea is standing in front of the freshly padlocked doors, rifle in her hands, squinting in the sun. Squinting at Beth. Beth remains where she is, keeps the few feet of distance between them, but doesn't make any move to go, although Andrea’s desire for her to do just that is palpable.

The cut on her wrist is itching like mad. It's taking everything she has to restrain herself from tearing back the bandage and gouging at it with her nails.

Andrea sighs. “What d’you want, Beth?”

That strikes her as an excellent question. What _does_ she want? She's been trying to figure that out. It's the kind of thing one asks one’s self in her situation, or so she'd gather. Since she got out of bed she's been approaching everything with a coolness that's somewhat surprised her; no fresh-faced joy for her, no newly falling in love with the world she's elected to stay in. No bright sunrise, no swelling orchestra. An uplifting redemption plot, this is not. More than anything it's what the Daryl in her head said to her in that frozen moment, his voice low and rough behind her.

That she could just see how it goes. She can always go through with it later. So she's waiting. She's… seeing how it goes.

The world, and its place for her in itself, are on probation.

In the meantime there's this goddamn barn. She glances past Andrea at it, its gray bulk and weathered slats, and shrugs, because why the hell should she lie now? “I dunno. I guess I just wanted… to come see.”

“There's nothing to see. It's a barn, same barn as it's always been.” Andrea jerks her head at the house. “Why don't you get back to your family.”

It's not a question, or an invitation. But Beth holds her ground. “How bad did Daryl hurt him?”

She's still not certain whether or not this part troubles her, what Daryl apparently did. Or she's pretty sure it does, but the trouble is complex in ways she wouldn't have anticipated and isn't confident in unraveling.

His split knuckles. How hard do you have to hit someone to do that to yourself? How many times?

Has he done that kind of thing before? He has to have done. Where he comes from, the kind of man he is, there's no way he hasn't.

_The kind of man he is._

Andrea’s lips draw into a thin line. “He’ll be alright. You don't need to worry about him, it's not your problem.”

“Way Daryl was talkin’ about him, seems like maybe he's all of our problem.” She crosses her arms. “You think his… his friends are really gonna come after us?”

Andrea is opening her mouth to answer, her exasperation now extremely blatant, when a muffled groan comes from inside the barn. It's a broken, pathetic sound, and when words follow it she can practically see the swollen mouth that shapes their pained forms.

“Hey. You out there, can I—can I get some water? Please, it's hot in here, I'm—” Harsh, rattling cough. “I'm so thirsty, my mouth hurts real bad. Just a little water, I ain't askin’ much, have a heart, pl—”

Andrea rams the butt of the rifle against the door. “Shut up.”

She actually remembers the boy. It comes to her now only hearing his voice; she never knew him well, they weren't in the same grade and never ran with the same crowds, but she does know him. Quiet kid. Very _normal,_ for lack of a better word. She doesn't even recall why she noticed him in the first place, doesn't recall why she would have had any reason to.

He seemed nice enough.

It's not that she feels sorry for him. That's not what this is about, the knot cinching itself tight under her diaphragm. It's not pity.

But it's sure as hell _something_.

“Why can't he have some water?”

“Because.” Andrea rakes loose strands of hair back from her face. Sweat is shining around her hairline. “I’m standing guard and I'm not leaving to get him a damn drink.”

“So I'll get him one.” She half turns. She means it, she realizes. It's a simple thing. Someone is thirsty, you get them water, and whatever other danger this boy poses, why should he suffer unnecessarily? “I'll go right now.”

“You’re not going in there. No one is, Rick said.”

Beth narrows her eyes. “That ain't Rick’s barn he's in.”

“It doesn't matter _anyway,_ ” Andrea blurts, suddenly frustrated apparently beyond her ability to contain. “Or by tonight it's not going to, so just _let it the fuck go_.”

For a long moment, Beth stares at her in silence. So it's this. This is the conclusion they've come to. Maggie herded her away from the rest of the group before she heard Rick’s pronouncement on Daryl’s report, and she never made out even a snatch of what was said then. But she had looked at Rick’s face, the tension around his mouth and strain around his eyes, and she had known somehow all the same.

Had known it was no good, what was coming next. Even if she didn't know the details.

“You're gonna kill him,” she says softly. “That's what you're gonna do.”

Andrea gazes at her, jaw working. She hates it. That much is very obvious. She hates every part of this. Yet she's standing here with a gun in her hands, and she won't let Beth get a drink of water for a condemned man, and she hates that too. “We don't have a choice.”

“Is that so.”

“Yeah. It is.”

For a second or two—no longer, she's not that foolish—she considers arguing further. Making a case for what, whole-heartedly and without any need for consideration, she believes: that this is wrong. That whatever danger is here, killing this boy—and making him suffer beforehand—is wrong.

What Daryl did is wrong.

But there's no point. Where Rick derives his authority over these people, she doesn't quite understand, but that authority seems solid, and even people who don't like it are highly reluctant to buck it. Simply having been a cop before the world ended doesn't feel sufficient to explain it. A father might command such authority, but Rick is not Andrea’s father. Yet she's obeying him, and whatever she's telling herself about the justification, she's doing so against her own instincts. Her own moral center.

That's not a good thing to see.

_Except Shane,_ murmurs a voice deep inside her. Shane isn't under his command. Not at all. She's seen that more than once by now.

That's another matter.

She unfolds her arms, drops her hands and clenches her fists. “It's not Rick’s barn,” she repeats, but she's already turning to go. Turning toward the pasture. “It's not Rick’s barn, and it's not Rick’s farm. He can't just do whatever he wants, Andrea. He can't.”

_I won't let him._

Which is a stupid thing for a sixteen-year-old girl to think. How the hell is she supposed to stop him? Fully grown man with a bunch of fully grown adults to back him. Adults with guns.

If he wanted to take the farm… He wouldn't. She has no doubt of that. What he's doing now is wrong, but he's not a bad man. If he had wanted to push things into a truly dangerous place, he would have done that before now. He means well.

But if he wanted to take the farm, he almost certainly could.

She doesn't have a prayer of being able to stop him. Not on her own. But she doesn't have to be on her own. She stalks across the grass, her wrist still itching, and her footfalls pound in her ears. She's on a mission now, and she supposes it feels good to have one. She's been drifting. Not like before, not with that awfully numb disconnection, but still unmoored. But now she's doing something.

Rick could take the farm. But he hasn't. He has no right to do this. So someone needs to remind him.

~

The pasture fence is broken, and badly. Daddy is wrestling with it, panting, his shirt plastered to his back and his temples glistening. Behind him, a few of the steer trot in a wide arc, driven by Maggie and Patrica waving sticks. It's obvious enough what's happened. Not the first time the steer have gotten loose. The fence somehow always was a problem no matter what they did.

Beth grits her teeth. The timing couldn't be worse.

Well, she can't afford to wait.

“Daddy.”

He stops. Freezes, really, and looks up at her. There's something apprehensive in his clear eyes, and she doesn't like it. He hasn't been outright strange around her since she came out of the bathroom, not exactly, but last night, as he cleaned her wound and applied the bandage—so careful, so gentle—she saw him fighting back tears, and wished so fiercely that he would just let them fall. He hasn't cried yet. Not in front of her, and she wonders if he has at all. If he did in town, alone and hunched over a bottle. She's all right, for now, but he's not, and even if he was touching her, sweeping her hair back from her eyes and pressing his lips to her brow, she was looking at him from across something wide and deep.

She knows what guilt looks like, and she was seeing it then. Before, it might have sparked cold satisfaction, but not anymore.

“Daddy,” she whispered, and he said her name in the same breathless whisper, and gathered her close and held her. She wrapped her arms around him and was held. He was as big and solid and strong as ever, and she buried her face in the hollow of his neck and smelled his sweat and aftershave and the faintest lingering hint of alcohol, and it was good.

But that gulf was still there. And it's still there now, as he pulls a handkerchief out of his back pocket and mops his brow.

“What is it, Bethy?”

“They're gonna kill the boy you brought back. Randall.”

No sense in working up to it.

He regards her wordlessly for a long time, his face totally impassive. She meets his eyes without flinching, barely even blinking; this isn't a contest of wills, but now that she's put it out there, she's staying with it and not letting it go. And surely he'll be with her. This isn't the kind of thing he would ever abide.

But he's still not speaking, and unease is beginning to creep over her. “In the barn,” she prompts.

“I know who you mean.”

She can't read his voice any better than his face, and she doesn't like that either. She tries not to fidget, but her confidence is starting to crack around the edges, and just as she was getting with Rick…

She has a bad feeling.

“They'll do what they do,” he says, and turns back to the fence.

She stares at him. For a moment it's all she can manage. He's been through some hell, they all have, and she understands as well as anyone by now how the new world can and will harden them. She understands heartless necessity. Didn't she watch Daryl leave his brother behind? Didn't she shoot her own mother in the head? But this, now. After everything. This.

“They're gonna _execute_ him.” She takes a step forward. “You're just… You’re just gonna _let ‘em do it?_ ”

He doesn't raise his head, bending to collect some fallen planks. “It's their business. I'm not going to tell Rick how to handle his people.”

“He's not one of _their people._ ” She shakes her head, half disbelieving. She didn't come here ready for a fight, and the thought that she should have, that she's still being too naive even at this point… “He’s from school. I know him.”

“From what I've been given to understand, that's the essence of the problem.”

“He's not a bad guy.” She's struggling to keep her voice from rising, and she's not entirely succeeding. The fight over the guns. The fight over the walkers in the barn. Now this. Is she ever going to fall in line with him again? Is this simply how things are going to be now?

Did she change, somewhere back there in Atlanta? Somewhere in the blood and the terror and the death? Did something happen to her? Did she come back wrong?

It's not the first time she's thought this. But she had hoped that might be over now. That whatever had changed, walking out of that bathroom alive had kicked it back into place, like how hitting someone in the head reliably cures amnesia in bad movies. Apparently no such luck.

Possibly it only made the whole thing worse.

“I'm sure of that.”

“What I'm sayin’ is we can talk to him. If we let him stay with us, why would he go back to them, to where he was before? It sounds like they're bad people, so why wouldn't he stick with the people he knows?”

“Beth.” He pauses and releases a weary breath, head bowed. Behind him, Maggie trips and narrowly misses sprawling into the dirt, barking a curse that once would have made their parents blanch. For Daddy’s part, he either doesn't hear or doesn't care. “I can't. I won't.”

“Daddy, _listen to me—_ ”

“No, you listen to me.” And there, for the first time in a long time, perhaps since she came back, is his Father Voice, what she guesses her old and no doubt late history teacher would have called _the voice of a patriarch_. Low, deep, and firm. Final and brooking no argument. He leans on one of the planks and gazes at her with every feature set stony. “Once I would have. Perhaps. But it can't be my place now. I've made too many mistakes.”

“You're makin’ another one,” she murmurs, and steels herself instinctively. Once upon a time, a retort like that might have earned her some kind of punishment. But he merely continues to look at her, unbending.

“It could be. It wouldn't surprise me, to tell you the truth. But I mean what I say, Beth. I'm finished involving myself in Rick’s affairs. What he does is up to him, and I'm leaving Randall’s fate in his hands. And so will you.” He levels a finger at her. “You stay out of it too. Mind me. I don't want to have to tell you twice. Now.” He hefts the planks and turns away. “I have to get back to this. It needs to be mended before sundown.”

_No_. In her head she's shouting it. Not a childish tantrum but a full-throated refusal. Against his weakness, which _still_ hasn't left him, and the self-deception that goes with it. It's wrong, it's _wrong_ and she already knows Maggie won't fight him on it, but goddammit, someone has to. Another mistake. Another one, and once more blood is going to be spilled because of it.

Maybe this really is just what her life is going to be like. From now on, until one way or another it ends. Fighting and fighting and never stopping, against her family and her friends and people she barely knows.

People she thought she knew.

For some reason, as she spins on her heel and walks away, she's thinking of the blood congealing on Daryl’s hands.

~

Rick said Dale would come to him, and he knew it was so, which is why he's not remotely surprised when he sees the man climbing the rise toward him, his strides tired but determined. But Daryl’s gut sinks, and he pauses in the act of feeding his fire to reflect on how many different ways there might be to say _no_ and _leave me the fuck alone, old man, I've done my part._

_Go appeal to someone else’s better angels because I'm afraid mine have all checked out. Not that I had much of a host to begin with._

“Daryl.”

He lifts his head, regarding the man with a gaze he hopes comes across hard and unwelcoming. Not that he has a prayer of heading this conversation off at the pass. He doesn't know Dale very well but he's gathered enough intel to get a sense of the kind of man he is. Frustratingly persistent. Often nosy. Self-righteous when he feels like he's right. Stubborn as a fucking goat. A bad attitude isn't going to chase him off.

He huffs. “Man, the whole point of me comin’ up here was to get _away_ from you people.”

“Really.” As he expected, Dale seems entirely unfazed. “For someone who wants to get away from us, you sure do spend a lot of time with the group.”

“Man, fuck you, I don't need my head shrunk.” He pushes to his feet and moves over to the chimney stack, crouching to rummage through his pack. Not for anything specific, simply to have an excuse to be elsewhere with his back turned. “I'm better off fendin’ for myself.”

“You act like you don't care.”

Daryl barks a laugh, glancing over his shoulder. He straightens up with his knife in his hand; he's guessing intimidating Dale is as a lost as cause as any other means of getting rid of him when he doesn't want to be gotten rid of, but it might be worth a try. He returns to the fire and crouches again, picks up a twig and begins to strip it of bark. “Yeah, ‘cause I don't.”

“So live or die, you don't care what happens to Randall?”

“Nope.”

“So why not stand with me?” Dale spreads his hands, but there's a little too much force in it for it to be beseeching. “If it doesn't matter one way or the other if he lives or dies, why not throw in with me, try to keep them all from doing something they'll regret forever?”

He shakes his head and rolls his eyes heavenward, toward those angels he doesn't possess. “Why the fuck you think my opinion’s worth anythin’? Ain't no one lookin’ to me for shit.”

“That's not true. Rick looks to you.”

“Bullshit. Rick looks to Shane. Man, Rick barely knows me. Hell, you barely know me.” He lifts the knife and aims the point at Dale. “You come up here thinkin’ I'm gonna stand with you, I don't know where the hell that stupid fuckin’ idea came from but you best get it outta your head right now.”

Dale exhales. “Maybe I figured you might care because you cared about Sophia. You cared a lot. I saw it.” He must miss the hackles he's summoning to rise, the tension vibrating through the man in front of him, because idiot old man, he's forging ahead. “I barely know you, I guess you're right about that. But I don't think just letting a kid die is your nature. That doesn't match what I've seen. Hell.” He gestures at Daryl’s hand; the split knuckles are washed but still ugly. “ _Torturing_ people? I _know_ that's not you. You're a decent man.”

“I ain't,” Daryl says. Low. Dangerous. He's not going to hurt Dale, he's not because there's nothing to be gained by it and perhaps much to lose whatever else might be true, but his blood is humming and that's bad, and a white rose is wilting and dying, and the milky eyes of a dead little girl are rising like twin cursed moons in his mind. “You hear me? I'm a lotta things, but decent ain't one of ‘em. Now fuck off.”

Dale doesn't speak. Just looks at him with that maddeningly stubborn gaze, and Daryl’s jaw is a spring winding itself tighter and tighter until it squeals like a pig being jabbed with a cattle prod, and still the bastard won't go away, what the fuck, what the fuck does he have to do to be rid of him.

“You're wrong,” Dale says at last. “You're a decent man. One day I think you'll realize that.” Finally, mercifully, he turns away. But he's not quite ready to shut up, and he tosses one last thing over his shoulder.

“I just hope it's in time.”

 


	27. watching the chances scatter and fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the day goes on, Beth struggles - with Randall’s impending execution, with her own situation, and with the man who keeps running away. Until night falls, and everything goes wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, almost at the finale. Couple more chapters to go before we say goodbye to the farm. Hope you’re enjoying the ride. ❤️

Beth doesn't go back to the barn. She considers it, going to the house and getting a glass of water and taking it out there and just _staying_ until Andrea lets her in or threatens to shoot her, but something—not fear, she doesn't think so—keeps her away, and instead she finds herself drifting aimlessly, heading through the trees past the camp and toward the east pasture. Not much out there, no reason to go, and perhaps that's why. Its fundamental pointlessness as a destination might be appealing.

Also, it hits her, there's the little hill, and the chimney, and Daryl’s camp.

It's a fact. It's a thing that's true. Is there significance beyond that? Is she heading in that direction with real intent? What for? If Daddy didn't listen to her, she doubts very much that he'll be willing to consider whatever _Daryl_ might have to say, and after this morning, after what little she did hear…

His hands. And whatever his genuine feelings, he didn't appear sorry that he had done it.

Her gait has slowed to a plod, which she isn't aware of until voices some distance away halt her, grab her by the attention and hold on. They're not especially close but they're clear; she's reached a location close to the pasture near a copse of trees and a storage outbuilding, and the sound plays off the surrounding surfaces just right.

Carol, speaking. _Heaven_. Beth stays where she is, leans against one of the smaller outlying oaks, and listens.

_She's in a better place._

_No, she's not._ Carl, sharp and laced with far more adult scorn than she'd expect to hear in a child’s voice. Wouldn't she know? Isn't scorn an emotion which with she's now intimately familiar? _Heaven is just another lie, and if you believe it, you're an idiot._

Silence. No response from Carol. Beth isn't at all surprised; no way that didn't sting, and part of her—the part of her properly brought up by a mother who showed compassion as naturally as breathing—is taken aback. Saying _that,_ not only to a grownup but to a grieving mother.

But is it really such an unreasonable thing to say?

Feet crunching over the grass. Not a heavy tread. He comes toward her through the trees, head down and his father’s hat low over his eyes, and when she clears her throat and he stops dead a few feet away and jerks his head up, the hat slips down comically over his ears. She manages to suppress a smile as he straightens it and then glares at her, as if he's well aware of what she didn't just do.

“What?”

She shrugs. “Heard you talking to Carol.”

His glare turns suspicious. “So what?”

“You said Heaven was a lie.” She pauses, chewing her lip and studying him carefully. “You really think that?”

He kicks mutinously at the ground, hands stuffed in his pockets. Before, he didn't sound childish, but his entire affect is now. Not irritatingly. Mostly, she looks at him like this and she feels a heavy, weathered sadness like a riverbed stone in the pit of her belly. “Yeah, I do. ‘cause it is.” He pauses a second, looking at her. “You think it's not?”

“I dunno.” No reason to lie. He'd probably be able to tell if she did. “I thought it was real. Mama and Daddy always told me it was. Daddy especially.”

“So what about now?” Some of the anger has left his voice, though not all. “What changed your mind?”

She breathes a laugh, casts a gesture around at the world in general. “You've seen what I've seen. Probably that's why you feel how you feel. Does this seem like a world where Heaven could be real?”

Which isn't quite it. But she's not sure how to get at what _it_ truly is. Whatever words she has are inadequate to the surreality. The way the past week or so has been like watching the face of reality peeled back like a mask, a comfortingly normal visage tearing away to reveal something else horrible and disgusting and rotting from the inside out. _Inside out._ Nothing working the way it should. All the lights went out. Bombs fell on the city and birthed fire. Soldiers and police killed fleeing, innocent people. Now the dead don't stay lying down but get up and walk and try, with terrifying determination, to make more of themselves. Little girls. Little babies. A bullet in her mother’s head from her own hand.

She was supposed to graduate high school and probably go to college, meet a nice man, get a job, get married, settle down, have children, have a life. A good life. Maybe not exciting, but she never felt much yearning for excitement. It was good to know that all those good things were waiting for her, and all she had to do in order to get them was go on living.

That's a lie. The world has made all those things lies. She'll never graduate. She’ll never go to college. She’ll never get a job. She doubts she’ll live long enough to marry, to have kids, maybe even fall in love at all. She didn't die in that bathroom, but she's not stupid. She's not blind.

That promised future was a lie. But she's also wondering whether it was ever true at all.

Maybe, even if the world hadn't changed, things might have gone very differently.

“Yeah,” Carl says, quiet. Nodding. He gets it. She meets his somber little boy eyes and she sees that he does. “It doesn't. So that's why.”

For a long moment they simply look at each other, and the understanding feels like a thread stretching between them, gossamer-thin but strong. She's older than him by years, but he lost what she lost, albeit in significantly greater amounts; she had also counted on having a couple more years to really be a _kid,_ no matter what pretensions—driving, parties, maybe even some serious makeout sessions with Jimmy if he seemed interested, though she was pretty sure she wanted to wait to go much further than that—she had forward adulthood.

This isn't a world for kids.

Finally she breaks the tether and steps away and past him, heading for the small white tower of the chimney. “Don't say stuff like that to Carol, though. Okay?”

In the periphery of her vision she sees him turn to her, faint betrayal flashing across his face. _I thought you got it._ “Why not? It's _true_.”

“Because.” She glances back. “She's hurt just as bad as you are and it hurts her worse. If she wants to lie to herself, let her lie.”

It isn't as if she's trying to keep her goddamn daughter in the barn.

“You're not sure it _is_ a lie, though, are you?”

She halts, turns to him. He's facing her squarely, no longer wounded or angry but simply… lost, maybe. Lost and too old, and she hopes Lori finds him soon, because he doesn't get to be a kid anymore but he still has his mother, and his mother should hug him while he needs it and while she can.

“What d’you mean?”

“You said you didn't know. If Heaven was real or not. So you think it still might be?”

That's not hope that she hears. But it might be someone wishing hope was a thing they possessed.

“I said I dunno,” she repeats simply. Again, the truth is easiest. “I'm…” She gives him a small smile. Not an especially reassuring one, but it's what she has. “I guess I'm just gonna have to wait and see.”

~

Daryl isn't there. Somehow that's what she expected.

She doesn't go immediately. She stands very still, listening: the whisper of wind through the trees, the shrill call of a starling, the distant lowing of the cows carried across the field. Possibly he's not gone. Possibly he's hiding—a strange thought, but it doesn't feel impossible. She didn't miss the way he looked at her this morning. Stricken. Like he wanted to look away and couldn't bear to. Something bad was behind his eyes.

Perhaps he doesn't want to deal with her.

But no. She's certain of it: he's gone. He's left behind the dead remains of his campfire, a small pile of wood and kindling, his pack leaning against a pile of rubble, and what look like a few half-made bolts. A little ways away, his bike sits under the shelter of a tree.

Hunting, possibly. Or he just left.

At least he’ll definitely be coming back.

After another moment or two she makes her way to the chimney and sits down, leans against it with her arms resting on her bent knees and sighs. Can't quite resist scratching around the edges of the bandage. It's all still going wrong. She tried to put it right, or at least repair the worst of it, but despite the fact that she's nearly positive she made the right choice in staying alive, nothing is fixed. Too much bad has been done, and no one who has the power to stop it is brave enough to do so.

And she's not sure there's any point any longer in her trying to argue or shame them into it. They don't listen. They don't listen to a teenage girl, and with a dismal twinge, she thinks they’ll probably listen to her even less after what she's done, because of what they'll see when they look at that bandage around her wrist.

She remembers. Parts of the world were broken before the whole thing went to pieces.

When she was a freshman in high school, a boy a grade above her killed himself. Hung himself in his bedroom. The whole school was hurled into a state of shock, and instead of open conversation there were hushed whispers in the hall and on the football field, under the bleachers where the older kids went to smoke and pass a flask around. He hadn't seemed like the _type_. He was always smiling, always friendly. Best in his drama class. Sang in the glee club. Not the captain of the swim team, but arguably one of the stars.

Then he was gone. And while there was no official explanation, some people found some suspicious activity on his Facebook profile before his family could scrub it clean except for some pictures and all the memorial posts—odd that they did… Despite all that, there were rumors.

Kid like that, like who he probably was, they're never going to be okay in a town like this. Or they wouldn't have been, until the dawn of a world where it's unlikely anyone would care.

After, she heard how people talked, the tone of it below the sadness. It wasn't just the rumors. It was that something broke in him. Something brittle snapped. There was a frayed thread no one knew about, and when it tore the entire thing came unraveled.

The unspoken verdict: He did it because he was gay. But he also did it because he was _weak_.

She scratches harder.

But Daryl didn't look at her that way, when he came in to see her. Didn't sound like that. Uncomfortable, definitely, but she sensed it wasn't actually about her. If he didn't entirely want to be there, it wasn't about what she had done, or had tried to do. It was something deeper, something closer to him. She can't read his mind, shouldn't be as confident as she is, but all the same: he didn't think she was broken.

If he was here, he might listen to her.

Might be worth a try.

She waits for a while, watching the shadows lengthen and the sun sink toward the line of trees along the horizon. But he doesn't return. And finally she climbs to her feet and dusts herself off, scrubs at her face, turns and makes her way slowly back toward the house, fighting the heavy shadow wrapping itself around her.

There's nothing more to be done. Likely there never was. Her first estimation was correct: it's all going wrong, and she has no power to put it right. Probably she should simply accept that and focus on doing what little she can.

Until the great moment of breakage that this is all inexorably headed for. Because that hasn't happened yet.

And when it comes, there won't be any going back.

~

They're meeting in the parlor. 

She doesn't go in. She lingers in the hall, one hand on the bannister, her lower lip caught between her teeth—no question of why she isn't joining them. She wouldn't be welcome. Daddy said he was staying out of it, Maggie ushered her away from their first meeting, so although she spots Maggie standing by the window, her arms folded over her chest and her mouth unhappily thin, she doubts her company is included on the guest list for this little party. For certain they won't want her input. So she stays put, listening.

Listening with the spring in her core winding tighter and tighter.

They're coming to the end of it. That much is clear. And the end hasn't been a happy one, and it's easy to guess what that ending has turned out to be. Because Dale is furious, and the rest of them are utterly silent.

_Don't you see? If we do this, the people that we were… That world we knew is dead. And this new world is ugly, it's harsh, it's…_ survival of the fittest _. And that's a world I don't want to live in, and I don't believe any of you do. I can't. Please._

_Let's just do what's right._

_Isn't there anybody else who’s going to stand with me?_

Still silence. Then, a rustle that she can tell is someone standing, and when they speak she somehow isn't remotely surprised at who it is.

Andrea.

_He's right. We should try to find another way._

Beth drags in a sharp breath, closes her eyes and leans more heavily. No hope in that, because she already knows it won't turn the tide. Because a couple of good people isn't sufficient. Either they all stand up, all together, or it's not going to matter, and these aren't bad people… but she's not sure they're good, either.

Or not good enough.

When Dale speaks again, she can hear that he knows it too.

_Anybody else?_ Pause. _Are you all going to_ watch, _too?_ He lets out a scornful sound that isn't even vaguely a laugh. _No, you'll all go hide your heads in your tents and try to forget that we’re slaughtering a human being. Well, I won't be a party to it._

_This group is broken._

Floorboard creak. He's leaving, coming toward the front hall, and she pulls back into the shadows closer to the stairway, one hand on her mouth as if to stifle a moan, as he yanks open the screen door and storms out into the dusk. It's awful. It's like the final death throes of something struggling to stay alive no matter how doomed it is. Standing alone against it, raging against the dying of its light.

This is the world Lori hadn't wanted Carl to survive in. This is the world Beth almost chose to leave, which she might yet choose to abandon. _That choice wasn't a one-time thing,_ murmurs a voice. Not her own. Not sure whose it is. _Hate to break it to you, but that was just the start. It's a choice you're going to have to make over and over, every day. Every hour. Every moment._

_And it's not going to get easier._

~

She's waiting on the porch for Daryl when he comes out.

He exits last, head down and shoulders hunched and his hands swinging loosely at his sides. She only needs a second to look at him to glean the depth of the unhappiness, as instantly as she gauged the same in Maggie. Dimly, she marvels at the fact that she's barely even known him two weeks and already she can read him that well.

Then again, she'd guess he's never in his life been a difficult person to read.

She shifts on the step, leaning just into his path without tripping him, and he stops and stares down at her, face lost in shadow and the porch lights bleaching him of color.

“What?”

“Hello to you too.” She hasn't the first clue what she hopes to gain from this. She watched Rick and Shane striding away toward the barn; any second now she's expecting to hear the shot. Short of charging in there and throwing herself in its path, it's too late to stop it. And she can't entirely shake the feeling that she should be doing just that, that it's cowardice to sit here instead of going down to the very last wire to keep it from happening.

Yet here she sits.

And she can't let it slide past without saying something to him.

He sighs. No trace now of the hesitant gentleness she'd seen when he stood in her doorway to tell her goodnight. “The hell d’you want?”

She gestures at the barn. “You alright with this?”

This time his sigh is closer to a dry laugh. “Christ, don't you start in with this shit too.”

“Answer me.” Low, quiet, but God help her, she's not going to be moved by him. Not him, above everyone else—her own father batted her away, but Daddy didn't see what she saw, Daddy hasn't been through what she has, and Daddy didn't fight his way out of a dead city with her at his side.

Like it or not, for better or worse, the truth is that while there's plenty about her that this weird, rough man doesn't know, no one here knows her in the way he does.

No way in _hell_ is she going to take a brush-off from him. Not again. Not anymore.

He looks down at her, jaw working. “Don't matter whether or not I am.”

“It does matter.” She grabs the railing, pulls herself to her feet and steps up to level their heights, her face even with his. “You know what? I don't think you are. I don't think you're alright with it at all. But you just kept your mouth shut in there. Why?” Insanely, she pokes a finger into his chest. He stares down at it as if he can't totally believe it's there. “And don't you tell me it _don't matter._ ”

He raises his head. She still can't see his face, which should bother her, but it doesn't. Whatever is on his face doesn't matter. What he's feeling is coming off him in waves like heat, like radiation: that unhappiness she discerned at first, the mild disbelief that she's literally jabbing him in the chest, but also a sense of violent struggle—and not the first time she's spied that in him. The first time he took her with him, there was a heavyweight wrestling match going on inside him, and she doesn't think it's stopped for a second in all that time since.

“You don't wanna care,” she says softly, lowering her hand. “I know you don't. You don't wanna give a shit about what's right. But you do. You care a lot. Don't you _dare_ try to tell me you don't care. If you didn't care, you wouldn't have tried so hard to find that little girl.” She draws a breath, fixing eyes she can't see with her own. “If you didn't care, you wouldn't have brought me home. You would’ve left me in that hospital.”

_You wouldn't have come to my room and said what you said._

He says nothing. That's fine. If he doesn't answer her now, she realizes she's content with that. She's said what she was waiting to say. She can't argue him into explicitly coming to her side, that's true. But she also doesn't have to, because whether or not he wants to admit it, he's already there.

What she can do is make sure he knows that she knows. That he's not fooling her. Not for one goddamn second.

“You're a good man,” she murmurs. “No matter how hard you try to pretend you're n—”

From the fields, a scream.

~

Whatever she's dragged him into, he snaps right the hell out of it.

Before the scream comes again, before he can pinpoint its source in screamer or direction, he feels a wave of perverse gratitude. That was a conversation he didn't want to have in any way, shape, or form, but regardless of how easy it should be to tell her to fuck off and go on his way, she remains the most impossible girl he's ever met and by some hideous witchcraft she was _keeping_ him there, pinning him with eyes way the hell too piercing for a sixteen-year-old kid.

Now the spell is broken and she's looking toward the sound, hands flying to her mouth as it comes again and he whirls, already starting to run before his boots even hit the dirt. Out into the dark—other voices calling, other runners alongside him. Human, that scream—though he can't identify who it is—and twisted with a mix of horror and pain.

It's not from the barn. And as he runs it comes to him, that kind of coolly removed observation his mind helpfully supplies at the oddest moments: There was no gunshot.

There should have been. They had more than enough time. But there was no gunshot.

They didn’t do it.

Now this, whatever it is. Far but not too far, and he skids to a halt just in time to avoid running into Andrea’s back, pushing past her and staring down at what Rick is crouching over even as she shoulders him aside and joins Rick, her shoulders shaking with sobs. Together Rick and she mostly obscure what's there, but he sees enough. The sheen of way too much blood. The slippery gleam of intestines.

Dale’s wide, terrified eyes.

_God, no. No, no, not him. Please not him._

_Not one of the good ones._

Cries for help. Cries to no one. _Get Hershel. He needs blood. We have to operate here._ He wants to laugh. Christ, what a fucking joke. Operate, on that, on a man who's been gutted and will bleed out in scarcely minutes, who has a hole far too big in him to ever seal. Scratched, bitten, ripped nearly in half; not even an hour ago they condemned a man to death, and now they're stupid enough to think they can save this one.

A quiet groan from behind him, breaking through the noise. He squeezes his eyes shut and doesn't turn.

Of course she followed. 

Andrea lifts her head and looks around wildly at them, her face wrenched, all frantic desperation. “He's suffering! _Do_ something!”

The rest of them might not know. But she does.

Now, apparently, Rick does too. Because he's pushing to his feet and unholstering his Colt, raising it and pointing it at Dale’s head. _Do it._ A silent scream that might actually burst out through his chest, crack his ribcage wide open. This man shot a little girl in the head. Whatever else is true of him, he should be able to make the hard choices. Do what has to be done. Do ugly work when the work needs doing. _For the love of God, just fucking_ do _it_.

But Rick’s face is a contorted mask of misery. And worse: he's scared. He's frozen, and through the freeze he's shaking, trembling so hard there's every possibility that he'll miss entirely if he takes the shot. Which must be why Daryl steps forward as a bizarre calm descends over him, washes in like a tide. It must be why he gently takes Rick’s wrist in one hand, steadies him, and with the other carefully slides the gun out of his grip.

_He's suffering._

Rick seems to sag as soon as the gun is gone, folds inward and nearly collapses. His wife steps out of nowhere then, against his side, holding him up, and when Daryl meets her eyes the strained gratitude there is unmistakable.

Whatever. Doesn't matter the reason.

_It does matter._

Down on one knee, the hammer thumbed back, and he sets the muzzle against Dale’s temple. The terror hasn't left Dale’s eyes, and this is so obscene. This is not how it should be. Of course it's this way, he shouldn't expect any different, but it's so wrong for it to be like this, no peace and no goodbyes and pain this bad, and all his fucking life this is how it's been and he's just so tired.

For a fraction of a second he looks up, and there she is. _Beth_. Impossible girl. Tears shining in her eyes—but she's as calm and weary as he is. Yes, of course she followed, but this isn't the worst thing she's seen. Not even close. There's nothing to protect her from.

She knows exactly what she's witnessing now. She knows, and she's not judging him harshly for it.She understands the choice.

She made the same damn one with her own mother.

“I'm sorry,” he says quietly. God, he is. “Sorry, brother.”

The Colt is a cannon. What it does to Dale’s head is the final obscenity.

 


	28. I feel my wheels are turning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Dale’s funeral, Beth makes Daryl an offer. He promises to think about it - and as he does, it’s hard to keep pretending that he’s not a part of whatever’s still to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Folks, I am so excited to be where we are now and so excited to take you to what’s coming next. That is all. ❤️

For a while, a crazy little while in the crazy days right after Atlanta burned and everything tipped over the edge into utter disintegration, the days when he spent most of the time just as drunk as Merle was high because sobriety felt like outright idiocy, Daryl wondered if there would ever be another funeral.

It seemed so pointless. So absurd, the very idea of it. Redundant. What the fuck good would it do? Death used to be the rule but death wasn't the _only_ rule, and now it's difficult to see what else there can possibly be.

He still doesn't get it. With every single one they have, he gets it less and less.

But here they are again. As dawn is breaking, faint and colorless and unnaturally cool, they're all circled around a new mound edged with white stones while Rick delivers some kind of homily that Daryl gathers is meant to be uplifting, about _proving Dale wrong_ regarding how broken the group is, about being stronger, about pulling together and making it work no matter how hard it gets.

How many of them are actually buying it? How many of them are trying? He'd guess the majority, because he's taken the measure of these people by now and they all still want to believe, no matter how ready they were to commit murder, that the old world might not truly be gone.

In terms of their success in the sale, he's not so sure.

Beth is standing across the mound from him, her hands folded in front of her and her eyes downcast. He's looking from her to the grave and back again—to his own hands as well, the dirt still caking his fingernails and the scrapes on his knuckles from where he fumbled one of the rocks, because naturally he helped dig the hole. He didn't even try to argue himself out of doing so. He's in it. He's deep in the shit of these people. Might as well face the music, stop telling himself his own stupid unpurchasable story. 

He doesn't think Beth is buying what Rick is selling. Not remotely. No idea where the hell he’s getting that impression from, but it's strong enough to make him certain.

And gazing down at Dale’s grave, where they put who was, in his estimation, the last truly and unapologetically _decent_ man among them… It’s hard not to feel that they've lost something, closed off some road they might still have taken. Stupid thing to suppose, but he can't shake it any more than he can shake his suspicion of Beth’s skepticism.

They can't come back from this. Forward is the only way they can go.

~

When they disperse, she's still there, arms now folded over her chest and her head bowed, and while with the way the sun is falling over her back he can't see her face clearly, he can tell she's lost in thought.

So he might leave her be. Instead he walks over to her, stops at her side and follows the line of her attention, and says nothing.

He really doesn't have anything to say.

She apparently does, though, because after a moment she looks up at him, the sunlight catching her eyes and making them shine. Possibly the last traces of her tears, if she shed any, but somehow he doesn't think so.

“Do you believe him?”

He frowns, gives her an interrogative grunt.

“What Rick said. About proving Dale wrong. You think that's something we can do? You think that's possible?”

He had doubted that she believed. Now it hits him that she might have been thinking the same thing about him, that their mental trains had unknowingly been running along parallel tracks, and he's not sure why that should make him feel good but it kind of does. A little. In the thinnest possible way.

At any rate it makes him feel less alone in the proverbial crowd.

He shrugs. “I dunno. Maybe.”

“Oh, c’mon.” Her smile is mostly humorless. “Don't give me any BS. I saw you, I saw your face. You don't think it is.”

He barks a laugh. “So why the fuck’re you askin’ me, if you already know?”

“‘cause I wanted to give you a chance to tell me yourself,” she says, her tone now serious, and something about that shuts him up, kills any scoffing he might have done. He doesn't feel that he's failed some kind of test, really, but maybe…

Maybe he should have guessed she knew and handled that differently.

He sighs, glances at the grave and back at her. “I guess he'd like it to be true. I guess Rick wants to try.”

“But you don't think they can.”

“Not really.”

She nods—equal parts acceptance, agreement, and meditation. “I don't… I can't say _why_ they won't make it work. It's just a feelin’ I have. But I trust it. It's not just what they were gonna do with Randall, somethin’ else is wrong. Really wrong.” She nods toward the house before he can respond, and turns. “C’mon and walk with me?”

It's phrased as a request, but it's not one. He feels no particular surprise when he obeys without hesitation and falls into step beside her.

It's going to be another nice day. The wind is freshening. The birds in the oaks and the high grass are in full song, almost as if in some sort of defiance of the horror of the night before. The house is once again cast in clean whiteness that belies its age. What few clouds there were are blowing off, and there's a crispness in the air that feels almost autumnal. There's plenty of summer left to go but it's coming.

Time doesn't give a damn what happens to them. It just keeps rolling on.

“Daddy’s gonna ask everybody to move into the house,” she says after another moment of silence. “He was keepin’ his distance but he changed his mind last night.”

He shoots her a look. This seems incongruous. The distance Hershel had been determined to keep had seemed to be only widening. “How come?”

Beth rolls a shoulder. “He didn't say. At least not to me. I'm guessin’ it was Dale, though. Maybe he felt bad for not wantin’ to get involved. Maybe he's doin’ what Rick said, tryin’ to prove somethin’. Either way, he's gonna offer.”

“What d’you think about it?”

“I think it's a good idea. Whatever it does, whether it _brings people together_ or it doesn't, it seems like it's safest.” She slides her hands into her pockets and bites her lip, consternation flashing across her face. “We’ve been actin’ like walkers were never gonna make it back onto the property and tear someone up, and that was stupid. It's always been stupid, barn or no barn. Now one of ‘em is dead. If that didn't get it into their heads that this is for real, I dunno what could.”

Unspoken, except for her vague _that was stupid_ observation: _It never should have taken that much for these idiots to get that. If they don't wise up there's no way any of us survives._

He nods, chews the edge of his thumb. They're passing the camp, where the smell of bacon and eggs is wafting from the large skillet set over the cooking fire. His stomach rumbles—but he feels no genuine desire to head over there and take the plate that would undoubtedly be handed to him. Not yet.

And it's not out of any _it’s not my problem_ bullshit.

She's looking at him again, and some harder element of her gaze tugs his own over to meet it. What she says doesn't come as a shock—he realizes as she says it that he suspected it was coming—but it still impacts him.

Like her forefinger jabbed into his chest.

“You should move into the house with the rest of ‘em.”

He coughs, mouth twitching. “‘scuse me?”

“You heard me. You should. I know Daddy offered it to you when you first got me home, and I know you said no and I think I get why, but that was then. It's different now. You’re all alone up by that chimney and it ain’t safe.”

Grunt. For lack of anything better to do with his hands, he fumbles in his pocket for his smokes. “I can handle myself.”

“I know you can, it's not about that.” She stops, catches his arm and pulls him up short. He turns to her, brow furrowed, but he's not as annoyed as he should be. And her face is somewhere between solemn and mild  _don't fuck with me_. “Can't you—” She exhales, plainly exasperated. “Can you do it for me? I know you don't owe me anythin’,” she adds quickly. “It ain't about that either.”

His jaw tightens. “The hell’s it about, then?”

“I’d feel better,” she says simply. “And you're part of this. I know you don't wanna be, but I also think you know it's too late for that now.” She gestures at his camp. “You can pack up your bike and leave anytime, except if you were gonna do that we both know you would've already. Look, I'm sorry I got you into this, okay? I figured you'd just get me home, and… I dunno what I thought would happen after that. I didn't think it would all be this bad. But I'm not stupid, and I saw how much you didn't wanna be here after we… after we found Sophia. But you stayed. They've made some bad choices. I dunno if they're gonna make it. But it's not even really about you being _one of them_.”

Her voice lowers, softens, and he thinks shit. Because again: not even two weeks and she knows how to play him. She knows how to get what she wants.

_Does she? Is that honestly what this is?_

“I know we don't know each other that well. But you saved me. I tried to help you, I did what I could. We got out of a bad place, helpin’ each other. That… That’s gotta mean somethin’, right? What we went through. Together. That's not worth nothin’.”

He looks at her for a long moment, pack of cigarettes forgotten in his hand. It occurs to him, somewhere in that wordless span of time, that no one has ever said anything like this to him. Merle, perhaps on paper, but only cajoling, bullying, manipulating him into giving in. Whatever Beth may or may not know how to do with him, no, that's not what this is. If she's familiar with manipulation, she doesn't employ it cynically.

She means what she says.

He still hasn't the first clue what to do with that.

So he merely releases a breath and goes back into his pocket for his lighter. “I'll think about it. Alright?”

“Alright.” Faint smile. “Thank you.”

 _Why the fuck are you thanking me?_ Like he's done her some kind of favor by indicating that he might be willing to occupy her house. But he doubts that's less than genuine, either.

Wild.

He slides the cigarette between his lips, flicks flame and inhales. “Gonna be kind of a tight fit, though, all those people.”

“It’s a big house. We can make room.” An odd expression passes over her face, not far from trepidation. “Anyhow, it's one less. Daddy doesn't want Shane in there.”

Everything in him pricks like a dog’s ears, and he stops in mid-drag, studying her. This is interesting. And more than a little disconcerting. “Really?”

She nods. “Says he doesn't trust him. Not after he's been flyin’ off the handle like he has.” Pause. She's working something over. Then: “I don't trust him either. Something’s wrong with him. And it’s not just how he flies off the handle. It's somethin’ else.”

She said something was wrong with the group, too. And that she couldn't put her finger on what it was. Maybe she was telling the truth about that as well, but she's right about not being stupid, and he'd bet his bow and his bike and everything in his pack that she knows exactly what it is.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, stepping past her and heading for the camp and breakfast. “Neither do I.”

~

“Daryl.”

He looks up to see Rick climbing the porch steps, evenly meets that cool blue gaze and taps ash over the railing. He's been sitting up here for over an hour, smoking and mercifully left alone to meditate on things in general, but he didn't honestly expect that state of affairs to last. In truth he's not even overly bothered by it.

He has thinking to do, but mostly he's been spending the time chasing his own brain in circles.

“‘sup, Sheriff?”

Rick gives him a wry smile, leans against the wall beside one of the parlor windows and scans him up and down. Daryl takes a drag and allows Rick to look, make whatever evaluations he's interested in. No doubt he'll find out soon enough what this is all about.

He does. “You up for taking Randall out with me?”

Daryl arches a brow. This is somewhat unexpected. “Like before?”

Rick ducks his head. Half a nod.

“Which I heard didn't go so well.” He points at Rick with the end of the cigarette. “You thinkin’ I’m less likely than Shane to try to put your head through the pavement?”

Rick laughs and looks away, and there's nothing in the laugh that strikes Daryl as anything but sincere. It's a rueful laugh, perhaps a tad embarrassed, but that's all. It's also weirdly contagious; in spite of himself he finds the corner of his mouth creeping upward.

But he also does want some manner of answer here. He nods at the camp, where Shane is doing something complicated with a piece of rope. “Seriously. Why’re you askin’ me instead of your boy there?”

Rick doesn't answer him immediately. He's crossed his arms over his chest and gone back to studying, and this time Daryl can spot the aim behind it: whatever he was gauging before, now he's trying to decide how honest to be.

Which is indicative in and of itself.

“Because,” Rick says finally. “Last time it didn't go so well.”

Ah. “And you think it's gonna go better with me?”

“I think you've got your head on straight. Haven't seen anything to make me believe otherwise.” His lips quirk. “There were the walker ears, but we’re not gonna talk about those. Seemed like you were having a rough day.”

Daryl shoots Rick a Look—covering admirably, he thinks, for the fact that a healthy part of him just about choked on smoke. He'd actually forgotten about the ears, especially when he couldn't track them down, when forgetting them seemed like the quickest route to a fractionally less unsettled inner life. To whatever degree he retained any knowledge of them, he had been hoping everyone else had forgotten about them too.

Hell with it.

“You're all heart, Officer Friendly,” he says, bone dry, and flicks the smoldering butt of the cigarette over the railing into the bed of mulch below. “Yeah, what the hell. Ain't got nothin’ else goin’ on. Where’re you gonna take him?”

Rick’s expression is one of undisguised relief—which Daryl takes immediate note of, because relief implies—at best—uncomfortable consequences if he'd said no, which in turn implies a host of other things.

And it's not terribly difficult to deduce what those might be. Or, bare minimum, what their roots are.

_I don't trust him. Something’s wrong with him._

“Senoia. Hour there, hour back, give or take.” Rick rolls a shoulder. “We may lose the lightbut we’ll be halfway home by then.”

“Gonna just dump him by the side of the road?” He sounds casual to his own ears, but there's a careful quality in it, and as he speaks it comes to him in a way it hadn't before: he feels _bad_ about Randall. Specifically about _what he did_ to Randall. Maybe he should, maybe he shouldn't, and speaking ill of the dead aside, Dale had been spouting utter nonsense when he said _that isn't you,_ but even so.

He feels basically like shit.

“Not quite. Carol’s putting together some provisions for him, enough to last a few days. Anyway. I'll come get you when I'm ready to head out.” Rick squares his shoulders and pushes away from the wall; the interview is over, and that's fine. There doesn't seem to be much else to go over, and in the meantime there's another cigarette with Daryl’s name on it and some more thinking to do.

But Rick pulls himself up short no more than a couple of steps away and turns, and the look on his face halts Daryl just as suddenly in the action of thumbing the pack open.

“You, uh.” He drops his eyes, scuffles his boots a little. It's not that he doesn't want to say what he's trying to jam into words and shove out of his mouth. It's not that he's not trying. But what he's fighting through clearly isn't awkwardness so much as pain.

Well. A little awkwardness, for sure.

He lifts his gaze and meets Daryl’s. “About last night,” he says quietly. “What you did.”

 _Don’t,_ he doesn't say. It's as if the pain Rick is feeling stabs across the space between them and nails Daryl right between the ribs in a sharp twinge he can't hope to dodge. He wanted the funeral to be the end of it. Whatever foolishness Rick thinks is still possible where the cohesion of this blackly comedic group is concerned, whatever speeches he wants to deliver, the rest of it could have gone into the grave and be left to lie. He doesn't want to see the sheen of the blood anymore, the coils of Dale’s intestines draped over his torn side, the agonized terror in his eyes. The mess the Colt made of him.

He's seen so much hideous brutality in all these days, horror piled on horror, and it makes no sense that last night should have been the worst. And it wasn't, not really.

But it was bad.

And all through the rest of the night, digging a six-by-six pit by the light of the moon and an inadequate lantern, he had been unable to eject the feeling of Rick’s trembling hand in his from his fucking mind.

How it hadn't trembled at all when he shot Carol’s little girl down.

He grunts and looks away, rolling a cigarette between his fingertips. “Ain't no reason you should do all the heavy lifting.”

“I just wanted to say thanks,” Rick murmurs.

He doesn't say anything more. When Daryl chances a glance in his direction, he's no longer there.

~

Beth can't escape the feeling that she's messed this up.

She has no reason to think that. Daryl didn't freak out at her. He didn't yell, didn't scoff or sneer at her, didn't storm off, didn't so much as roll his eyes—not that she necessarily would have _expected_ him to do those things, although eye-rolling wasn't out of any question whatsoever, because he's been an asshole to her plenty of times, but what she suggested hadn't seemed to her like the kind of thing likely to set him off.

Although he's prickly as anyone she's ever met and the fact is that with him, she's never quite sure of her ground.

But he didn't. He looked slightly taken aback, slightly uncomfortable, but he said he would think about it, and the hell of it is that she fully believes him. He might end up saying no—she'd even consider that the likeliest outcome—but he’ll give it serious thought, and he’ll deliver his decision to her straight.

She guesses that's pretty much the most she could fairly ask for.

And yet she feels like she's done something to mess it all up.

Long before the world ended, she would handle times of uncertainty and consternation by taking them away with her to whatever quiet, isolated place she could find, and use a pencil and paper to draw them out into the light, take them in her hands and turn them over, examine all their knots and angles and search for a way, any way, to make some kind of sense of them. Problems didn't necessarily get solved like that—although it did happen from time to time—but they usually became easier to deal with. Easier to incorporate.

That hasn't worked so well in the days since. If anything more than once it's felt like avoidance. Like sanitization. But it works better than merely stewing.

She shifts her back against the tree, seeking a more agreeable position, and balances the journal on her knees as she reaches back to tug her hair free from its ponytail and attempts to gather the loose strands into some sort of control. The breeze is picking up, and it might make more sense—in terms of comfort if nothing else—to go up to her room. But the house is full of people staking out spaces and arranging bedding and organizing personal odds and ends, and she's not actually certain that her room is going to stay only _hers,_ and anyway…

Sun is better. Air is better. The lack of walls is better, the open sky. She's skeptical that she could breathe in there, at least right now. She lets her hands fall to her sides, palm up in the sparse grass with the gentle roughness of the roots against her knuckles, and she fills her lungs. Forgets the journal and what she might put in it. Perhaps the mere intention is enough to shake something loose.

Perhaps things might really be all right. Somehow.

Rustle of a footstep at her side, and someone softly clears their throat. When she looks up she knows what she's going to see.

He hitches the strap of his crossbow higher over his shoulder and bites at his thumb. His stance is uncertain, but only a little. Not indecisive. She knew he would think about her proposition and he would tell her his answer with perfect honesty, and that's what he's come to do. So for her part, all she can do is sit and wait to receive it.

“Been thinkin’,” he says, “‘bout what you said.” Pause, as he appears to marshal some inner resource. Then, “Guess you got a point. Anyway it’s boring as shit, up there all alone.”

Everything in her releases, uncoils, and she can't help her smile. She sits up straighter and lays the journal aside, taking a breath. Maybe she should feel self-conscious about being so obviously pleased, but she's not. Why should he have a problem with knowing he's pleased her?

He comes very close to returning the smile. And she'd swear that as almost-smiles go, it's actually the smallest bit shy.

“Good.” She nods to emphasize. “Good, Daddy’ll like that.”

He huffs a laugh, and it's rough but amiable. “Why the fuck?” And she can guess what he's leaving unsaid.

_I’m a piece of white trash with Nazi shit on his motorcycle._

“‘cause,” she says with absolute confidence, and she's not pretending, for his benefit or anyone else’s. “He knows you're alright. He feels like you can keep it together. You're not like Shane. And he's grateful to you for bringin’ me back.”

“He say that shit?”

“No. But I can tell.”

Again, no pretense. She can tell, the same way she can discern the deeper unease Daddy feels regarding Shane, aside from his ruling that the man isn't welcome in his house. Daddy is stoic enough and always has been, but while he isn't overtly expressive, at least not most of the time… She’s known him literally all her life, and _she knows him_.

He doesn't precisely _like_ Daryl. But he trusts him, enough. In spite of what happened at the barn.

Maybe even because of it.

“Anyway, they’re claimin’ their spaces. You better get up there if you don't wanna get stuck in the cellar or somethin’.”

He shrugs. “I don't care where I end up. Can bunk anywhere. Besides, Rick and me’re headin’ out pretty soon to drop Randall off.”

“Oh?” She feels not one iota of surprise. It's hard to miss the direction in which Rick has been looking over the course of the last few days. Shane is falling out of favor, and it's not a wonder. “He asked you?”

“Yeah. Guess he figured I'm less likely to try to get him in a headlock. Anyway, I ain’t a fuckin’ idiot. Ain't no one gonna win that fight.”

She nods. Shane, on the other hand. Shane is big. Powerfully built. She's gotten the minimum gist of what happened when he and Rick attempted to take Randall out the first time, and she’s sure Rick could more than hold his own, especially against a man who wasn't pulling out all the stops to take him down, but even so.

And would Shane actually contain himself to that extent? If they came to blows a second time?

That she's even asking the question isn't good.

“I'm glad you're the one goin’,” she says, her attention flicking toward the camp. “With Randall, honestly, he ain't a bad guy, whatever kind of people he ended up with. He doesn't deserve—”

 _What you did to him,_ she thinks, but she doesn't say it, because it wouldn't be fair at this point and she truly does believe he's sorry about it even if he hasn't said so—and anyway, she wouldn't get the chance if she tried, nor does she get the chance to say anything else. She was interrupted once before and now it happens again.

And this time it’s Shane. Because of course it is.


	29. don’t go outside tonight, the locusts fill the sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Glenn and Daryl hunt for Randall. What they find is more than one awful revelation, as events gather into an even more awful ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaalmost there. I have to say, something that’s both interesting and kind of frustrating about this is that, because I’m focusing on only two POV characters, crucial stuff like Rick’s confrontation with Shane necessarily takes place entirely off-screen. That’s fine, you all likely know what happened in that scene anyway, but it’s one of my favorite scenes on the show and I don’t get to include it. Rick as a POV character would probably be an interesting addition to this fic, but obviously that would make it even heftier to take on, and would likely make it twice as long given how much of the show is already told through his POV anyway. 
> 
> Anyway. I’m very excited for the next three or four chapters, I think you’ll be pleased. Especially with the foreshadowing, which I’m sure most of you will spot. It’s not subtle. 
> 
> As always, thanks for reading. ❤️ Lemme know what you think.

It's too fucking dark. 

If he's honest, he's halfway to throwing his hands up and heading back. It's easy to dismiss a lot of things as pointless these days, but this really does feel, if not entirely pointless, possessed of a point of a decidedly tenuous kind. Weren't they letting Randall go anyway? Yeah, a good ways out, he sees the logic of that and completely agrees, but how much of a difference does that make at the end of the day?

Kid was going to be gone. So now he's gone.

And at Rick’s insistence he's out here with Glenn, who seems well-meaning enough and perfectly nice, but uncertain and a bit nervous, judging by his breathing and the rhythm of his gait. Would assume he was downright hapless except for the story he heard about the kid going down the well. You don't do something like that if you don't have a set of balls of at least decent size.

Or you're out of your damn mind.

He bends, scanning the leaf litter. Another reason this strikes him as somewhat devoid of a point: it was near dusk when they set out, it’s full dusk now—on an overcast night to boot—and he's not sure how exactly he's supposed to operate at peak performance under these circumstances. He went out searching for Sophia with Andrea at night, true, but she had to have known as well as he did that it was mostly a fool’s errand. Something to make them both feel like they were accomplishing something. At minimum that they were trying.

Glenn treads on a particularly brittle stick, which snaps with resounding emphasis. He makes a little hicupping noise and jumps, and Daryl sighs.

“Fuckin’ stupid, man.”

Glenn shakes himself, takes a breath. “How's that?”

“Bein’ out here.” He shifts the bow more solidly into his shoulder and gestures at the world in general. “Ain't gonna find shit, most likely.”

Glenn takes another few and more cautious steps, though he noteably doesn't move in front of Daryl. He looks around as if he might be able to see something, as if he could pick it out if there was anything to see—which Daryl frankly doubts. Kid doesn't strike him as the hunting type. “Well, Rick said.”

“Rick didn't say. Or he did, but just ‘cause Shane did.”

Which is another thing he'd taken note of.

Glenn shrugs. By what Daryl can see of his face, his expression is uncomfortable. Doesn't even need to see his face to know that; it's radiating off him. Palpable. He doesn't like this any more than Daryl does. “Can't hurt to look.” Daryl is about to shoot back that it most definitely can, but Glenn gets there first, huffing a laugh. “Okay, yeah, we’re out here in the woods at night looking for a guy who already clocked Shane pretty good, I know. It's not great.” He’s quiet for a moment, shuffling a little as they duck under a low branch. “So you think we should just let him go?”

Daryl snorts. “I think he don't matter much one way or the other. He wanted to take his chances out here alone, fuckin’ let him.”

“You don't think he’ll try to find his group, like Rick said before, come after us?”

It was and is a fair question, and Daryl doesn't answer immediately. He does have an answer, but it's not especially defensible, not when it comes to the facts. And yet. Does his opinion matter much one way or the other here, either?

“No,” he says finally, pausing to peer down at a suspicious depression in a bare patch of earth. “I don't think he's gonna.”

“You don't think he's going to go back to them, or you don't think they'll come after us?”

“I don't think he's gonna screw over a family he knows. Didn’t seem cold like that. I do think if he can get back to his old group, he will.” He crouches, carefully brushes the leaves aside—feeling more than seeing. “What he told me…” He shoots Glenn a glance. “I wasn't kiddin’ when I said they was bad fuckin’ news. But they're all he's got. They're safety. Food. A place. For some people now, that's all that's gonna matter.”

_You'd know all about that. Wouldn't you?_

_You never answered my question, little brother. You’da stopped ‘em? Been the big damn hero? You really think that's so?_

He grits his teeth, waves at Glenn. “Yo, bring the light over here.”

Glenn obediently flicks the flashlight on, leans to shine it on the ground by Daryl’s hand. “Here?”

He flicks a finger. “Little to the left.” Bends closer. Close enough to be sure. “Yeah, that's a footprint. Scuffed. Like he was draggin’ it.” He straightens, looks back in the direction from which he's reasonably confident it came. “I ain't seen nothing else around here. C’mon.” He starts forward with another beckoning wave. “Let’s backtrack. Find Shane’s trail, go from there.”

Glenn follows and draws up alongside, the flashlight beam sweeping ahead of them. “Wouldn't Rick and Shane have started there too, though?”

“Yeah.” Going faster now, even if he can’t make out a great deal else yet. It's like a hound catching a scent: he's found his focus, every fallen leaf and branch and dancing shadow acting to form a current through the air, a flow pulling him to where he needs to go. Even the barred owl hooting some distance away—calling directly to him. Encouraging. Telling him he's on the right path. An owl would know. “But if you're gonna do a thing, might as well do it right.”

~

It doesn't take long. Time tends to dilate for him when he slips into this place in his head, but even so, it can't be more than ten minutes—and Glenn, to his tremendous credit, keeps his mouth shut and allows Daryl to work undisturbed.

Can't be more than ten minutes… And they're not even halfway back to where they started.

He halts and raises a hand, and Glenn pulls up beside him, aiming the light by Daryl’s boot, indicated by the bow. Confirms. Daryl chews his lip.

This is unsettling. And he can't quite pin down why, except that it's a sensation he's come to associate very much with Shane himself. A feeling of not being on stable ground, of walking through a field pockmarked with concealed holes that might like to catch a foot and twist an ankle.

Glenn looks at him. “What?”

Daryl jerks the bow. “There's two sets of tracks here.” Exhales. “Shane must’ve followed him for a lot longer than he said.”

“Why?” When Daryl looks up, Glenn’s face—cast into a series of odd angles by the light—is otherwise a mirror image of what he imagines his own must be. Uneasy. _He knows,_ Daryl thinks. _He knows the exact same fucking thing you do. Already. Shit, everyone probably does, and they've just been letting it go to pieces right in front of them._ “Why would he do that?”

Daryl shakes his head. _Because he's goddamn Shane._ Wordless, he turns away, and when Glenn follows his progress with the light, he stops dead—moves forward another few paces and stops again, one hand resting against a young pine.

Beside a nasty red smear.

“There’s fresh blood on this tree.” He turns, tugged by that current, and knows what he's going to see seconds before his eyes land on it. “More tracks here. Looks like they're walkin’ in tandem.”

Walking again, and he only realizes it when he stops. He’s still partially lost in the movie unfolding in his head: two shades moving through an indistinct world, side by side. Not running, not hurrying, no sign of anything out of the ordinary at all—but the blood, the blood on the tree the two of them would have passed by now, and here—

A piercing cry straight overhead, tight with what sounds like distress, and almost simultaneously a small yelp from Glenn, and though it's cut off nearly as soon as it's out, it startles the killdeer enough to send it flying with a loud rustling of leaves and feathers.

“Shit.” Glenn rakes a hand through his hair, pushing his cap askew. “Sorry.”

Normally this might be worth a sardonic comment or two. Instead Daryl flicks his attention back to the ground—the stirred leaves, scraped dirt, obviously displaced twigs and a scatter of pebbles swept into an unnatural arc by the edge of a skidding boot.

“There was a dust-up right here.”

Glenn swallows and bends slightly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean somethin’ went down.” Daryl straightens, half turns away. Toward the creek, if he's not mistaken, and he doesn't see much chance of him forgetting that particular location. “Think if we—”

The rasping growl is as unmistakable as the bird call, and Glenn freezes as abruptly as Daryl does, head jerking toward the sound just as the walker falls on him with a snarl.

In Daryl’s unfortunately extensive experience, there is never anything smoothly choreographed about a fight. They're messy and clumsy and usually end up in a couple of assholes on the ground, grappling and kicking at each other until one of them rolls away and lies there. With a walker it's even worse, and in the dark worse still: the flashlight beam swings and flips up into the branches, throwing shadows into bewildering chaos and making aim practically impossible. Daryl throws himself backward as Glenn releases another panicked yell and he and the walker spin, and Daryl thinks wearily _fuck, not this, please do not make me go back to his girl, to tell this battered family they've lost someone else they care about,_ as Glenn hurls his weight against the walker and knocks him against the crossbow, sending the walker and Daryl both to the ground.

He's not annoyed. He's too surprised to be annoyed. He's also too surprised to mount an especially effective counter, and he's wrestling with the bow between them as teeth rattle and clack inches from his face and hooked dead fingers scrabble against the dirt and his shoulders, and really he's not certain whether he'd prefer Glenn or himself to be the one to take it for the team in this situation, but Glenn saves him from having to find out.

Flash of a blade in the crazed light, a dull _thunk,_ and the walker goes rigid and then limp.

Then merely panting for a few seconds. Until the body draped over him shifts and rolls like a sack of potatoes, and Glenn extends a hand to him, his half-lit features arranged in an expression of sincere apology.

He takes the hand, grunts thickly as Glenn tugs him to his feet, and as Glenn scoops up the flashlight he checks himself numbly for wounds. His side hurts like a cranky bitch. He might have a bruised rib or two. Otherwise.

“Sorry about that.”

Daryl glowers a bit. “What's Chinese for _fuck you?_ ”

“I really wouldn't know.” Glenn’s tone flips immediately from apologetic to dry. “I'm Korean.”

“Whatever.” He swipes leaves off his ass, bends to retrieve the bow—and stops when the light falls across the walker’s partially visible face. “Shit.”

“What?”

“Shine it here.” He hooks a foot under the walker and shoves, flips it over in a loose flop of arms and legs and lolling head.

Daryl hisses a breath. He wouldn't forget that face. He doesn't forget faces anyway, but especially not this one, not when he's seen it tilted up to his, eyes wide and terrified, bleeding mouth contorted with pain. Because of him. Because of what he was doing.

“It's—”

“It's Randall,” Glenn breathes, and steps forward, machete forgotten at his side. “Goddamn.” He makes a pass with the light, down and up again. “Guess he got caught after all.”

“No.” Daryl slides a hand under Randall’s neck and turns the head, tilts up the chin to reveal the ugly band of bruises underneath. And the way the head is turning—too easily, too far. “He broke his fuckin’ neck.”

“Wait.” Glenn crouches, reaches out a hesitant hand to push Randall’s jaw up and back, further exposing the bruises. “No, that doesn't… That doesn't make any sense, he has to have a bite somewhere. A scratch. Something.”

“Hey, man.” He catches Glenn’s sleeve, studying him. Getting a sense of something. And it's something he can't believe, because he doesn't know how one _exists_ in this world, lives through what's happened, and doesn't figure it out. Doesn't notice the pattern. “You can check him, but pretty sure you ain't gonna find nothin’. I’m tellin’ you.” He hefts the head so that it falls freely, unmoored by the frame of a skeleton. “He died from this.”

“That's not possible.” Hoarse whisper. “You don't just—”

“You know, right?” He’s mildly surprised to hear the gentleness in his own voice. No, the kid doesn't know. Somehow or other, he doesn't know, and this is going to rock him. Because it's horrible. Because it's cruel. “You ain't gotta get bit to turn. You just gotta die.”

_This is what's waiting for all of us._

Glenn gapes mutely at him. Far away, impossible to tell how far, the killdeer cries.

~

What's remarkable, Beth thinks as she yanks down the hatch leading up to the attic, is how frightened Lori _isn't_.

She was very calm, in fact, when she came into the parlor and looked at them, smoothed her hair back from her face, took a slow breath, and said that Carl was gone.

It's useless checking the house. Beth knows it. They all must know it. Nevertheless, they're doing it anyway, because once they charge out into the night with flashlights and shouts, that'll be a step over a threshold from which there won't be any going back. What's on the other side of that threshold, she isn't entirely sure. Not necessarily death; she's considering this as she climbs into the musty darkness and feels around for the light. Possibly, but not necessarily. Or not only that. While she has no way of being so positive, she is.

Carl isn't dead. Not yet.

But something else is happening. A little—the smallest bit—like the sense of awful inevitability by which events organized themselves right up to the barn door and when it came crashing open. It's not quite the same, but it's of the same kind.

In the dim light of the dangling naked bulb, she gazes around at stacks of aged cardboard boxes labeled BABY CLOTHES, BOOKS, and CHRISTMAS. One flagged for the church rummage sale that now will never take place. A black plastic trash bag full of stuffed animals she never loved enough to keep in her room once she outgrew them but wasn't indifferent enough toward to give away. A dressmaker’s dummy lurking in a corner—isn't that a prerequisite for an attic in an old house?

All their old things. Relics of an old world.

From below, calls for Carl.

“Bullshit,” she whispers, navigates around the boxes to the tiny window at the far end of the room, and bats cobwebs absently out of the way as she stares out at the night.

The clouds have thinned enough for the moon to be hazily visible, and blooms of them are racing across its gibbous face. Nothing caught in its glow except faint outlines, the gray band of road, the skeletal frame of the windmill, the dark band of trees flanking the paler stretch of field. No Carl. Nothing moving at all that she can see.

No. Wait. Flicker, in the tall grass. Shifting, lengthening and shortening, and behind it, two forms as dark as the trees.

She spins and dodges around the boxes to the ladder, hops down it without bothering to lift it back into place, and she's at the landing when she hears the slam of the screen door and the voices echoing across the yard.

Glenn. Daryl.

Lori, Maggie, Andrea, and T-Dog are already outside when she gets there, with Glenn and Daryl approaching at a walk so fast it's nearly a trot, the light bobbing ahead of them. T-Dog is stepping forward, hands spread in an attitude of _what-the-hell._

“Man, what happened out there? What’d you—”

“Shane was lying.” Glenn pulls up short, breathing hard. Shoots a look over his shoulder at Daryl. Daryl’s face, just visible in the illumination of the porch light, is grim. His eyes meet hers and something passes across the space between them, something that jolts her and lifts the hair on her bare arms like static electricity.

_It's starting._

“What?” Andrea turns from Glenn to Daryl, gripping her rifle hard enough to press the blood from her knuckles. “What're you talking about?”

Daryl shakes his head. His mouth is a thin line, his eyes narrow—everything about him has sharpened somehow, pointed as a bolt. “Randall didn't get loose. Shane took him out there, offed him. Broke his damn neck.”

 _Oh_.

And she expected this. Of course she did. The second he staggered toward them, face bloody and eyes wild… It was the eyes. The way they refused to settle, the way he didn’t quite meet anyone’s gaze. Perhaps none of the rest of them saw it, perhaps they didn't know what they were seeing—she hadn't, not really, not then—or perhaps they didn't let themselves know. Because everything that's happened, from the barn to now and all the way back to when she found his hair dusting the sink and clumped in the trash can and she couldn’t imagine why he would have done that.

She still can't. But she doesn't need to. It's _Shane,_ and he's not _right,_ and he's never been right since the day she saw him.

Her hand slips off the railing and flies to her mouth as she leaves the bottom porch step, all the blood rushing out of her legs. “He's out there with Rick,” she breathes. “He took Rick with him.”

Lied to get him out there. Alone.

No one appears to have heard her. Glenn definitely hasn't, and now she's close enough to see that he's shaking. It's subtle but it’s there, like a blur around his edges. “There's something else. The walkers, they're… It’s not what we think. Listen, we—”

Lori screams and clutches at T-Dog’s arm. She's staring past Glenn and Daryl, staring through them, and as she points they whirl, Daryl’s bow raised so fast it's as if it was there the whole time. The moon picks that moment to slide from behind the clouds, and it's all clear.

The trees. The field. Coming across it, coming to them at a run, a man and a boy. They're nothing more than shadows, but she couldn't mistake them for anyone else.

Just Rick. Just Carl.

No Shane.

Close behind them, emerging in a slow, steady stream from the trees, a wall of other shadows. As if the trees themselves have tugged their roots free and begun to walk, shuffling through the night to reclaim the land the arrogant humans stole from them. Whispering as the wind stirs their tops—only these trees aren't whispering.

They're hissing. Groaning. Growling.

“Oh my God,” Glenn says softly. “Oh my fucking God. It’s a herd.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always thought it strained belief a bit, that the group would have lived through the entire zombie apocalypse without picking up on how everyone is “infected”, so I figured that at least Daryl—who is highly perceptive and picks up on details—would have figured it out. 
> 
> Beth also knows, as you might have picked up on; a few of you have expressed curiosity regarding what happened to the walker babies at the beginning of the fic, and the subtle implication there is that they had been killed by the nurse prior to Beth’s arrival in the ward. Whether or not the nurse understood what would happen to them if she didn’t destroy their brains is a detail I’ll leave up to you, but I will say that it’s reasonable to suppose that she wasn’t thinking clearly by then. In any case, Beth did see people in the hospital who had died and turned without being scratched or bitten.


	30. maybe it’s all we can’t take

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The herd descends on the farm, and the group makes one final desperate attempt to save themselves. Beth won’t just stand by and wait to be rescued—unless she has no choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple more chapters in season 2. Honestly I kinda can’t believe we got this far. 
> 
> ❤️

Her words are echoing through his mind as he helplessly watches those small figures run. 

_We’ve been actin’ like walkers were never gonna make it back onto the property and tear someone up, and that was stupid. It's always been stupid._

She's smart, and she was right. But he'd bet she wasn't ever imagining something like this.

The herd is swarming to the side, flanking Carl and Rick— _herding_ them, as they turn and sprint away from the house toward the barn, hand in hand, and _shit,_ how can something so slow move so fast? He thinks about floods, tsunamis, unstoppable and undeniable acts of a dreadful god.

Or a world that simply doesn't give a shit.

“We have to help them!” Lori is lunging forward, only barely stopped by T-Dog’s restraining arm. “They're going to catch them, we have to— _Carl!_ ”

He grits his teeth. “We ain't gonna help nothin’ just tearin out there with no fuckin’ plan.”

And suddenly—to his great shock and consternation—they're all looking toward him expectantly, as if he has a plan to offer. Except Lori, who's still struggling weakly with T-Dog, panicked moans bleeding out of her. A reasonable reaction, in his opinion, to the very real prospect of her husband and son being ripped apart yards away. It's his own reaction that's unreasonable.

Why is he saying anything that can even be interpreted as seizing some kind of control? What the fuck is he _doing?_

“So what d’you think?” T-Dog pulls Lori closer as she sags against him, releases her when she shakes him off a second later. She seems to have broken loose from what overwhelmed her, though her eyes are still wide and not entirely sane. “We can't just leave ‘em.”

“Yeah, we can’t. But they're all comin’ this way, we gotta think about everybody.”

“Patricia.” Hershel, from the porch. Daryl glances past the rest of them; at some point Patricia and Carol joined them, though they're hanging back, looking around with obvious confusion. “Kill the lights.”

Andrea turns and starts toward the steps. “I'll get the guns.”

Somewhat to his relief, they’re all vaguely following her now, clustered together in a way that feels animalistically instinctive to him—which is also worrying. They can't afford to be instinctive here, nor can they act as animals. As they climb the steps, from beside him Glenn pipes up, sounding as if he's groping for optimism, which doesn't make him feel any better. “Maybe they're just passing, like the herd on the highway.” His gaze flicks to Daryl, questioning. “Should we just go inside?”

“Yeah, no.” He catches Glenn by the arm, nudges T-Dog to a halt. “Not unless there's a tunnel downstairs I don't know about. Somethin’ that size is gonna rip the house down.”

“What, then?”

Behind them, the door opens and there's a heavy rattle as Maggie and Andrea rejoin them with arms full of gleaming wood and polished metal. Rifles. A lot of them. He feels a cold wave of satisfaction, and then an equally cold ripple of amusement at Glenn’s face as Maggie places a shotgun into his hands, taking her own with all the confidence of a veteran.

“You grow up country,” she says, a touch wry, “you pick up a thing or two.”

Hershel raises his own shotgun, checks it over. “You can all go if you want.”

Daryl frowns. He doesn't care for the implications of this. “You gonna take ‘em all on?”

“We have guns. We have cars.”

“Right.” Andrea peers toward the barn through the scope of her rifle. “Kill as many as we can, use the cars to lead the rest of ‘em off the farm.”

When he said they needed a plan, this isn't what he had in mind. Not that he had anything specific in mind at all, despite what they appeared to think, but this strikes him as virtual madness. “You serious?”

“This is my farm,” Hershel says quietly. Glittering in the moonlight, his eyes are cool and certain and utterly hopeless. “I'll die here.”

_And what about your family,_ Daryl wants to scream. It's beating dangerously against the inside of his chest, threatening to force its way into his throat, hot and furious. _What about your fucking daughters?_

_After everything they've lost, you're going to make them lose a father, too?_

But Beth is standing beside Hershel, and her eyes are as cold as his, her face set. Next to her father—who’s a looming mountain of a man backlit by the parlor lamp just before it goes out forever—she's so small, so delicate and strong, and she holds the pistol in her hands without a hint of the trepidation he saw in Atlanta. She lifts it. Chambers a round.

She _won't_ die here. Not if there's any possible way she can stay alive.

But they'll do what they have to do.

“Alright,” he murmurs. “Guess it's as good a night as any.”

And the barn bursts into flames.

~

When Beth thinks back to when she and Daryl fled from the dead in Atlanta, through the department store and the wreckage of a life unconcerned with matters more complex than locating the perfect pair of sale-price Prada pumps, she doesn't recall anything like this.

What she does recall comes to her in neat, sensible still images, arranged in linear fashion like someone's nightmarish vacation slide show. As with any slide show the urge to look at literally anything else is nearly overpowering, but her memory has compressed the horror into a more flat banality. Here's where she almost fell and died. Here's where he dragged her onto the roof. Here's him and her sprinting down a dim hallway decorated with tangles of wire dragged loose from the broken ceiling. Here's a slightly blurred snapshot of the two of them stumbling between what seems like half a football field of clothing racks—judging from the slacks and knit tops, they're in ladies’ casualwear. A very poorly lit shot, probably taken as she cast a nervous glance behind her: the eerie shapes of mannequins reaching toward her with hands like smooth canoe paddles, their heads cocked as if they find her remotely interesting. Never seen but serving as the soundtrack to this presentation: the mournful drone of hundreds of walkers milling below them.

Here's Daryl’s face, his now-familiar features twisted with contempt and fury, his eyes slitted and teeth bared. He looks poised to throw himself at her. There's no sound but the cicada-hum of the dead, but she knows what he's saying. She recalls this too. That one word, said with more vicious hatred than she'd ever heard anyone say anything in her life.

_You_.

It's horrible, that slide show. But it's orderly. There's a sequence, and the sequence makes sense. It's nothing like this.

It's nothing like this chaos.

The RV roars beneath and around her. It's a coughing roar, more of an herbivore bellow than any sound a predator would make, but it's making an effort. It might be enough. Will have to be. The world through the side window is a mottled mess of trees and burning beams and flames, the last getting bigger and brighter all the time—and not merely because they're getting closer. A cry from somewhere behind and to their left, accompanied by gunshots; Glenn and Maggie, she supposes. She stares at the approaching barn, the fire licking greedily up its walls, and she imagines Maggie is still yelling at her, gripping her by the shoulders hard enough to hurt and demanding that she stay, she stay at the house with Daddy, what the fuck is she _talking_ about, saying that she’ll help, that _she'll go too._

Both of them knowing perfectly well that no one is going to make her stay anywhere.

“Almost there!” T-Dog, craning his neck from the front seat—fear overlaid by a hard seal of determination. “Get ready! I stop this, you shoot at anything that looks dead!”

Beside him, Patricia cradles her rifle with shaking hands, her face drawn and blanched. She was never good with a gun the way Otis was. Never really tried as far as Beth was ever able to determine. Took a turn once when he had lined up some bottles for Shawn and she brought them out some lemonade, when Otis insisted—clearly just to tease her—and she sent two shots zinging far wide and shoved the .22 against his chest, laughing and a little pink in the cheeks and ears. Pretty, then. Happy and in love.

Now Beth glimpses her face in the overhead mirror and it's as if the life has already left her.

It was like that on the porch, too. When she claimed her place riding literal shotgun in the RV.

_Otis would have done it._

Otis isn't here to do it.

_God_. The realization slams into her, rocks her back with all the sudden force of T-Dog applying the RV’s elderly brakes, and she catches herself against the headrest in front of her and almost drops her gun. _She doesn't mean to live through this._

_She doesn't want to._

Windows down and heat slaps her in the face like a massive hand. The barn is a wall of fire. She doesn't understand how anything can still be walking in there, let alone living, and yet they are, walking if not living: a crowd of them, seemingly no more than mildly perturbed by the conflagration all around them. Wandering aimlessly back and forth and burning as they do, staggering and toppling over each other and burning, stumbling into pens and burning, buried under a pile of collapsing beams and burning, burning, everything burning.

She can't think. She doesn't have to. The gun kicks concussion into her arms and shoulders, again and again. Her hands are doing all the work for her, and a far-removed part of her, circling over the scene like a reporter in a news chopper, feels cool pleasure as she makes one and then two and then three burning bodies fall.

The rest of her is entranced by the torrent of flame, dizzied by the howl of it as a sudden wind whips it higher. It goes on, that howl, drowning out the shots and the snarls of the walkers and the crash as more of the roof collapses in great plumes of sparks.

It almost drowns out Patricia’s agonized scream.

~

At some point, he lost all ability to discern whether this is a good or a bad idea.

It's an idea. It's a thing that's happening. It feels like the only thing that _can_ happen, not a thing they elected to do but a thing that's being done to them. He put his ass on the bike and he's swinging around in a wide arc, flanking the barn from the other side and squeezing off shot after shot as he goes—searching for anything that looks more like a man and/or a boy than a dead thing. But it's difficult to tell. It's difficult to be certain of any of what he's seeing. It's all gone dreamlike, hazy in a way that has nothing to do with the smoke, and if there's any reliable logic he can use to meet the world he's lost touch with it now.

He skids to a halt, takes another few shots, guns the engine. Yells wordlessly, not that anyone living or dead has a prayer of being able to hear him over the fire. His job, along with Maggie and Glenn, is to get the walkers to follow him away, and only now is he fully grasping what a fool’s proverbial errand that is.

There are too many. There are just too fucking many. There is quite simply no fucking way.

If Rick and Carl get out of there alive, if they're not already as good as ashes, it'll be a miracle far beyond his capacity for belief.

But he's here. And he's got a job to do, and it's do that job or run or lay the fuck down and die.

He punches thunder from the engine and circles out for another pass.

~

She sees Rick and Carl just as she's fleeing for her life.

She grabs for the certainty of it—that they're here, that they're alive—and clings to it even as she scrambles out of the RV and hurtles through a gap in the surging line of walkers. What happens to them now is yet another thing she can't think about; the only reality she has the ability to focus on is what's in front of and immediately around her. Beyond that reality is cloudy and moving somehow both too slow and too fast, but among those clouds she can still make them out: a man and a boy thrusting themselves through the fire and the burning dead and leaping onto the RV, clambering desperately up its side and standing, frozen and hurled into sharp ruddy relief, on its roof.

Somewhere behind her, possibly alive and possibly not, T-Dog making good his escape. Perhaps doubling back to help break open a path for Rick and Carl.

Patricia…

Patricia isn't going anywhere, ever again. She saw enough to establish that beyond a doubt.

She doesn't feel much of anything about that. It's a blank place inside her, where—if she survives—grief might take up residence.

A patch of open, walker-free ground some twenty yards from the barn; she claws her way toward it, shooting blindly. She must be running low on ammunition, though she stopped counting her shots a long time ago. In the distance she can hear the grind-growl of engines, the louder grating roar of a motorcycle. The crack of gunfire splitting open the red-black night. They're alive too, and fighting, and if she can make her way to join up with them…

Staggering and nearly pitching forward, she ignores the instinct shaking her with the knowledge that stopping now is suicide, and she looks back in time to see the last of the barn’s roof cave in with a tornado of flame spinning into a sky dense with smoke. For a second that feels like an hour she remains rooted to the ground and gapes at it. The fact of it won't penetrate. That it's gone, that it's gone and forever, this structure that's stood in its place for as long as she's been alive and a long time before that. All those hot summer afternoons of pitching hay. The daring leap from the hayloft and the sprained ankles. The nervous, exhilarating sensation of Jimmy’s cool, wet lips pressed against hers. All gone. All as if they never happened. A piece of her life, burning down before her eyes.

_You wanted to do this exact thing. You can't forget that. You were so angry, so despairing, that you wanted to see it burn._ Make _it burn._

_So now you got what you wanted._

She lets out a choked sob and from there doubles over into a fit of coughing that packs blood into her seared face and wracks her with nausea. Through it, fighting back the bile scorching her throat, she raises her head to see a smaller cluster of dead break off from the rest, some burning and some not, and lurch toward her.

She surely can't run anymore. But she does, weaving through a copse of young maples. For reasons beyond her comprehension—perhaps for the barn—they must want some kind of vengeance on her, because one of them throws up a branch and punches her squarely in the forehead, and a black curtain run through with crimson seams drapes itself over her like a net, and she’s gone too.

~

He makes it back to the house in time to watch Maggie and Glenn hauling Hershel off the porch, jerking him by the arm so fiercely that the shotgun slips from his hands and clatters onto the steps. He comes treacherously close to tripping over it, and then they're shoving him into the truck, and though he isn't struggling with them anymore he manages to turn and look back one final time, and his face.

His _face_.

No false bravado. No front. He meant what he said. He would have died here. He wants so _much_ to die here, in that house poised on the brink of being swarmed by the ruthless dead, surrounded by the life he knows he's lost and yet can't let go of.

And sitting on the bike, nerveless fingers curved around the handlebars, Daryl can't find it in himself to be angry at him for that.

Glenn slams the door on him, hurries around to climb into the driver’s seat. Maggie’s about to follow, and then she spies him and runs to him. Her hair is a black tangle, her sweat plastering her clothes to her body, and she barely looks like herself as she scans frantically around.

“We can't find Beth. Have you seen her?”

His gut melts through the seat to steam in the works of the engine. “She didn't get out with any of the others?”

“I don't know. I don't _know_.” Maggie nearly forgets the rifle in her hands as she swipes her hair out of her eyes, regains hold of it just in time. “We have to—” She gestures back at the truck, her eyes enormous and stricken. What she isn’t saying is loud and clear.

_I never should have let her go._

“You get goin’. I'll find her.”

He doesn't wait for Maggie’s assent, not even for any indication that she's heard and understood him. He's already wheeling the bike around and charging forward, the tires chewing up the earth. Back toward the fire.

Refusing to consider any possibility but one.

~

He stops at the RV long enough to see the walkers—heedless of the flames blistering the paint on its sides—swarmed around the front passenger window, their ripping teeth and the gleam of blood on the ripped flesh protruding through it, and he moves on. She's not there. She's not. No point in looking any further.

He’ll go elsewhere.

But one could barely call what he's doing _looking_. Looking for something involves directed attention, specific intent, and he's scattered, searching everywhere at once as he sweeps back and forth across open ground and through packs of walkers—some in flames and some not—half blinded by the tower of fire rising inexorably where the barn once stood. It's spread into the drier grass and the trees and close to the paddock, and as he passes it a hideous scream pierces his head, so like a human and yet extending beyond human into something far more terrible.

He knows how bad the scream of a horse is supposed to be. But he's never heard it before.

God, what he wouldn't give to never hear it again.

_Beth,_ his mind is chanting, tearing in circles like a panicked dog. _Beth Beth Beth._ But his hands are guiding the bike back around toward the source of that scream, clumsily shoving himself off it and sprinting under the low roof, fumbling at the doors to the stalls as the horses rear and whip their heads from side to side—and even through the smoke and the crazily shifting light he sees the whites of their terrified eyes.

He rolls to the side just in time to avoid being trampled as the last one batters the door open with a violent flurry of hooves and gallops into the dark, mane flying and chestnut flanks shining with sweat. Distantly, insanely, he recognizes Nellie and thinks _Well, you cowardly bitch, just goes to prove there's no hard feelings._

He scrubs at his face with sooty palms and he's back on the bike and cutting a swath through the dead, shooting until the trigger clicks empty and he flings the pistol aside. _Can’t keep this up much longer, brother,_ Merle observes. He sounds slightly concerned about how the evening is proceeding. _C’mon, man, ain't like you can't tell her family you did your due diligence. But this ain't good, and you know the longer you're here without findin’ her, the less likely it is you're gonna find her at all._

_Unless it's as one of them._

_Shut up,_ he hisses, and then he's screaming it, turning to face the inferno, howling it in duet with the bike and the fire until his throat is scraped raw. _Shut up shut up will you SHUT THE FUCK UP_

And he almost runs her over.

Blond hair dyed red-gold and spread across the grass. Blood black on her curled fingers, her face only half visible, her body twisted at the waist. The shadow cast by the tree partially obscures her, but he can spot a trail days old in inadequate light, see tracks where most people would see nothing but ground indistinguishable from any other, and he knows her instantly for what and who she is. He practically knocks the bike down in his haste to get off it, drops to his knees beside her and slides an arm under her back, lifting her with none of the care he should probably use. Her head lolls, appears for a split second as loose as Randall’s did, and the incessant mantra of her name switches instantly to a single bellowed _NO_.

Then she's blinking, peering blearily up at him and lifting a shaking hand to nudge at his chest as though she's attempting to fend him off, and he jerks her up to sit, framing her face and only noting the blisters rising by her temple and the significant amount of blood streaking her forehead with academic interest. Just at present he can't spare a care for those things either.

Behind him, the groans are beginning to swell above the crackle-thunder of the fire.

“Beth.” He shakes her roughly. “ _Beth_. You gotta get up. Y’hear me?” A glance over his shoulder; swaying silhouettes approaching as constant as a tide. Back to her; she's still merely gazing at him in vague confusion.

_Shit_. He whips a hand back and slaps her, ignores the surge of visceral self-hatred that stabs into his diaphragm. “Girl, we don't go _now,_ we are gonna fuckin’ _die_.”

_And I am_ not _explaining that to your father._

As if she doesn't quite understand what he's just done, she skids her bloody fingers across her cheekbone. But something behind her eyes snaps back into focus, and slowly she nods.

She totters when he gets her to her feet and for a bad few seconds he's sure she's going to fall again. But when he half-carries her toward the bike she keeps herself upright, and when he yanks her into place behind him and demands that she hang onto him and not let the fuck go, there's reassuring solidity in her arms as they circle around his waist. She's hurt and wobbly and probably not completely conscious, but even now she's still strong.

He shoots them into the dark like a bolt. He doesn't look back.

He hopes very much that she doesn't either.


	31. the silences and formlessness is gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth and Daryl have escaped from the farm. But there are other things they can't escape from—the past, and what they've lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Iiiiiiiiii have been waiting for such a long time to write this chapter. Oh, the slow burn, it so slowly burns. 
> 
> By the way I've decided that [this is the love theme for this fic.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72ye1IMywrQ) So you may, if you wish, imagine it appearing here for the first time.
> 
> ❤️

Fire.

It stabs into her eyes, not merely the intensity of it but the sheer fact of its existence, and she whimpers and cringes away. At the same moment something else stabs her, fine and thin as a needle, prickling all through her sinuses and spilling tears into her eyes. As if a tongue of flame has whipped out and slapped her across the face; this time her whimper is more of a shivering whine, and she squeezes her eyes shut and tries to turn her face into the merciful dark. 

Maybe she died. Maybe she died and, because she gave up on God when she was tested, because she didn't possess the faithfulness of Job and she didn't cry out in devotional prayer when she was struck over and over with curses and afflictions, she's been cast from earthly fire into fire everlasting. She thought God was loving and merciful, then she thought God was neglectful and absent, and she was wrong both times, because as it turns out God is a creature of endless wrath, and He punishes all who turn away from His terrible glory.

So beneath the pain she feels a surge of fury: _Screw_ a God like that. _Screw_ a God who would condemn her to eternal torment simply because she wasn't sufficiently obsequious. Because she had the gall to be bitter. 

Bitter about suffering she never did anything to deserve.

Firm hand curled around the back of her neck, forcing her to once again face the fire. A demon? Another bolt of pain crackles all over her face and down into her collarbones. Her head throbs sickeningly, and she struggles against the thing hurting her, trying with what little strength she has to push it away. 

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, girl, would you _hold the fuck still_.” 

She ceases her struggling and goes motionless. Not a demon, no. Not unless she's been in the company of a demon since long before her death—or she died longer ago than she realized. 

She blinks through the pain and before the fire his face comes into focus, bent close to hers: his tousled hair and high cheekbones and narrow eyes, the strange and somehow feral arrangement of his features. 

Something moving in a dim blur closer to her face. Black into brown into red when it withdraws. He's holding his bandanna, and by the dark patch over his fingers and the cool beneath the sting when he touches her again, she deduces that it's wet with more than her blood. 

She remembers then. Not well, not clearly, but enough. Running. The trees. An explosion of stunning light. Then nothing—until him.

Wave of humiliation when it comes to her, what must have happened; lord, that something so _stupid_ would take her out of commission. And maybe she was wrong about God, because she's alive, so apparently—when it suits him to do so—God watches over fools, drunks, little children, and girls named Beth Greene. On the whole, not the most upscale company to be among. Nothing against children. 

“There you go,” Daryl murmurs, and lowers the bandanna. When he turns her face further into the firelight, the firmness in his grip has given way to a more gentle hold, and she exhales, though she still has to shut her eyes against it. “Guess it's not too bad.” He releases her. “It stopped bleedin’. Don't think you're gonna need stitches, anyhow.” 

Sound of him moving, scuffling. Gingerly, she lifts a hand and traces her fingertips over her brow; the sting flares again, although not as sharp, and she can feel the edges of the wound. A gash, for sure, but though she can't see it, she doesn't think it's particularly deep or wide. 

Anyway, if she does need stitches, Daddy can— 

Her eyes snap open and her body jerks out of its slump and straightens. “Where’re the others?”

Because she doesn't hear them. Not nearby, not distant. True, she hasn't consciously tried to detect them, but she knows all the same. And she definitely can't _see_ them; the only sight that greets her is a small campfire built in a rough ring of stones, the shifting outlines of the pines beyond it, and him, crouched beside it and feeding twigs into the flames. 

Dull inky gleam in the periphery of her vision and she turns; his bike, leaning against one of the closer trees. Pitch blackness above. Either the moon has set or the clouds have swallowed it again. 

“ _Daryl._ ”

His head jerks up, his expression unreadable except for the tension at its edges. “What?” 

“I asked you.” She drags herself a little nearer, leaning in. She has more strength than she thought. She might be about to grab him by the vest and shake him. “Where. Are. The others?”

He simply looks at her, his jaw working very slightly and his teeth worrying at the insides of his lips. She's learned what that means; in his own way he's as expressive as anyone she's ever met, downright incapable of concealing his emotions worth a damn, and now he's deeply agitated. Squirming through his skin.

Doesn't want to answer her. 

“Daryl,” she breathes. 

“I dunno.”

She inhales. That's not as bad an answer as she was afraid she might get. “Did you see any of ‘em get away?” 

“Saw your sister right at the end. Your dad, Glenn. They was gettin’ out in the truck. The others…” He lowers his eyes. “Not sure. Dunno what happened after.” 

Daddy. Maggie. And Glenn—who she still doesn't feel like she knows all that well, but Maggie does, and that's what matters. So that's good. If it means what she hopes it does. She relaxes back a bit, out of exhaustion more than anything else, and presses a hand to her temple as her head pulses once, slowly, like a clenching fist. 

“We gotta look for them.”

“We ain't gonna do nothin’ in the dark.” 

She nods. She doesn't feel equipped to argue with that even if it was an argument she was inclined to attempt. In the meantime, along with the pain, she's beginning to be aware of the cracked stretch of dry mud her throat has become. “Is there any water?” 

“There's a stream. Should be alright for drinkin’.” He pushes up into a crouch, pauses and extends a hand. “I gotta take you. Ain't got nothin’ to bring the water in. You up to walkin’?”

She accepts his hand, wrestles back the nausea when she makes it first to her knees and then to her feet. “I think so.”

He grunts. “Good. Had enough of carryin’ your ass, you're heavier’n you look.” 

She might try to cobble together some kind of retort. As it is, she finds herself sifting through the pieces of her fragmented memory, searching for any recollection of him doing just that. One foot in front of the other, trading the aching light for the more amiable darkness as he leads her away—not carrying her, no, but with one hand cupping her elbow, and at that the image comes to her of the prom she'll never have: Jimmy in an ill-fitting tux and her probably wearing one of the sparkly gauzy pastel things she always admired in the Macy’s at the local mall, strapless and therefore maybe just the slightest bit scandalous as far as Daddy was concerned although she doubts he would have fought her on the point with much vehemence. That limo she was going to get with her girlfriends. The gym all decorated with streamers and balloons, tablecloths on the tables and plastic facsimiles of crystal glasses—weak attempts at being an adult kind of fancy that no one was genuinely interested in. Too-loud music. Awkward dancing. Punch that might or might not be spiked. And she wasn't intending to give it up that night even if Jimmy might have expected it, but she knew people who were, and the air would be thick with too much cheap perfume and just the right amount of hormonally nervous teenage anticipation. 

Instead of cheap perfume she reeks of smoke and charred flesh. Instead of makeup her blistered face is streaked with blood. Instead of a sparkly dress she's wearing filthy jeans and a ripped tee gone from white to gray with soot. The music is the harsh caw of a crow in the distance. The dancing is fleeing for her life. The punch is going to be a stream in the woods which hopefully won't make her sick. 

Jimmy is rotting in the ground with a hole in his head. The man with her is just as dirty and stinking as her, scruffy and backwoods and bad manners, and likely about twice her age. 

She suppresses a giggle that's far closer to a sob, nearly tripping over an exposed root as they come to a shallow incline, and the hand on her arm tenses just a bit. 

“What?”

“Nothin’.” She swipes at her face, winces when her fingers rub over the wound. “How old are you?”

“ _What_?” He stops dead, although whether it's her or the fact that she can hear they've come to the stream, she can't tell. “Girl, what the _fuck_?” 

“I dunno. Never mind.” She waves it away, her chest hitching again, and she coughs when she sinks down onto the bank, cool damp soil dreamily wonderful as it seeps through denim.

Cool water flowing over the backs of her burned hands. It washes over her, that sensation, and she almost plunges her whole face in, bending swiftly forward and scooping palmfuls into her mouth.

“Hey. Easy.” Nudge of a foot against her thigh. “Gonna make yourself puke, you don't watch it.” 

She ignores him, gulping mouthful after mouthful, and it soothes her throat all the way down to her chest, as if it's washing through her very lungs and taking the residue of the smoke with it. Then more of it splashed over her face, soaking the front of her shirt, and she doesn't care about the sting. God, she wants to crawl into it and bathe.

If it _does_ make her puke, in her opinion it might be worth the trade. 

But she's had enough then, and she sits on her heels, her head thrown back and her eyes lifted to the sky breaking through the branches—and there are no clouds. Only stars. Clear and piercing and brilliant, and very far away. 

Absurdly, she wants so much to cry. 

So she does. That sob wells back up and it chokes her, wrings her neck like she's a supper chicken, and an already cracked dam inside her busts open and unleashes a deluge, and she bursts into tears, slumping forward and trying uselessly to muffle her keening behind her fingers. From her throat it shivers down into the pit of her stomach, wrenching at her like a hand tangled in her guts, and if the water doesn't make her puke she wonders if this might. She doesn't know when she’s _ever_ cried this hard. Possibly never has. Just when she thinks it might be subsiding, another picture in that same hellish slide show flicks into focus and smacks her back down. The barn, yes, but also the shady paddock and the softly nickering horses, the wide golden-green pastures and the cows ambling across them, speckled flanks gone from black and white to eggshell and gray in the late afternoon. The house, which was so much older than her and which she now realizes she had assumed might somehow outlive her, its graceful gables and generous porch, the clean, homey brightness of its interior. Her room. Her books and knickknacks and clothes and makeup. All those things she had begun to regard with contempt, part of a life that had become and perhaps always was a lie—they're gone. They're gone forever. She’ll never get them back.

Her journal. 

Somehow that's the worst. Not least because just now, she can't remember anything she wrote in it. In her mind she holds it and she opens it, leafs through the pages, and every single one is blank. 

At some point—she doesn't know when—she unfolded her legs and drew them up, and her forehead is resting on her knees. At some point—she doesn't know when this happened either—he sat down beside her, not touching her at all but close enough that she can feel the warmth of him, and just over her weak snuffles she hears his even, regular breaths. 

Presently: “Y’alright now?” 

She detects no impatience. No exasperation. An odd little tightness, a hint of what might be some kind of distress, but if he's feeling that he's hiding it well. He's merely asking her. 

She picks up her head, scrubs at her nose with the back of her wrist—which only transfers over a healthy quantity of snot. She makes a face and wipes it on her jeans, and can't find it in herself to be embarrassed. 

She doubts he'd give a crap anyway. 

She's also not embarrassed about crying like this in front of him, and when she shoots him a glance she's not apprehensive about what she might see there. Which is hard to read anyway, and not only because of the darkness. 

She's not certain that she is all right, no. But she nods. 

“It's just…” It's not as if she owes him an explanation, and he most likely doesn't expect one, but she feels the need to offer one all the same. And simply listing the things that passed before her inner eyes isn't going to cut it. It's at once simpler and far more complex than that, and in the end she gestures up at the sky. 

“The stars,” she murmurs, and sniffs. “Summer nights, we’d all go out to swim in this pond, had these old trees around it and a big stretch of grass, and we'd lay on our backs and, y’know, look up at ‘em—” 

“And discuss about whether they was made,” Daryl says softly, “or only just happened.” 

No. No, that's not what they did, but she stares at him, startled and not trying to conceal it. 

“Huck Finn.” 

For a moment, nothing except the faint glitter of his eyes. Then he gives her a minute smile, nothing but the barest fingernail-moon edge of a curve. “Hardly ever read any books for school, not all the way through. But I did read that one.”

“I read it this summer. Back before…” She rolls a shoulder, mouth twitching. “Anyway. I was supposed to do a paper on it. I kept puttin’ it off.” She exhales heavily and wipes at her face again, this time more carefully. “Guess I got an extension.” 

For the rest of her life. 

However long that does or doesn't end up being. 

“Was supposed to do a paper, too,” he says, still soft. He's looking up now, only the barest outlines of his features illuminated by starlight. “Never did.” 

“You get in trouble?”

He shrugs. “No one gave a shit.” 

That says so much, that _no one_ , and yet it tells her almost nothing at all. Parents. Teachers. His brother with the Nazi stuff on his motorcycle. 

Who is this man? 

He barely even seems like a _man_ to her, now. It's crazy, one might chalk it up solely to the considerable knock she took on the head, but for all the world, she feels like she's sitting here on the bank of a stream deep in the woods with a kid no more than her own age. If that. A boy.

And perhaps it's felt like that with him since the beginning. So maybe it's not about the knock on the head at all. 

“It's all gone,” she says quietly, and lowers her head. “Everythin’.” 

Flicker in the dimness as he turns to look at her. Then silence as he chews on the corner of his thumb, shakes himself, pushes to his feet with a low grunt and once more offers her his hand. “We’ll look for ‘em soon as it's light.” He pauses and seems to tense up as she takes his hand, only to relax almost immediately. “Your dad’s probably okay. Your sister.” 

“I saw Rick and Carl. They were alive.” She says it at the same instant she remembers it, and as he releases her hand she doesn't miss the way his frame loosens, the relief rushing from him like a sigh. “Before I ran. They were on the RV, I don't know what happened to them after, but they were.” She inhales, gingerly starts back up the slope. “You think they got out?” 

“Rick seems like he can handle himself.” Gruff. There's a forced quality to it. “Figure he'd do whatever it took to keep his boy safe.” 

Yes, he would. She's confident of that—to the extent that she can feel confident about anything. How much difference that would make is a point of debate, but it's something. Rick has something to fight for. Something to stay alive for. That doesn't mean everything, but she knows how much it does mean. 

If he can survive, he will. 

The fire has died down to a smolder when they reach it, and she lowers herself with a quiet groan as he builds it back up from a small pile of twigs and thicker branches. The warmth and the light isn't as oppressive as it was, but it still raises the ache of her burns to a deeper twinge. She examines the backs of her hands; although the light is inadequate, most of it doesn't appear to her to be significantly worse than a bad sunburn. Only a few blisters, and the hair on her forearms singed off here and there. Her face she isn't as certain about, but it doesn't hurt worse than her hands, so probably it's about the same in terms of severity. 

She hurts all over, if it comes to that, and she's so tired. 

As if he can read her—likely he can, to an extent—he lifts his gaze to her, leaning back from the fire and dusting off his palms. She can't see any burns or other injuries on him, but he can't have come through unscathed. 

No one could. 

“Should get some sleep. I'll keep watch.” 

She frowns. “What about you?” 

“I'm fine.” 

She doesn't completely believe him. But it's another point she doesn't feel equipped to argue over, and her eyelids are abruptly lined with lead, drooping toward her bottom lashes. The dull pain is receding. She would have expected sleep to be elusive after something so horrible but she won't have to hunt for it after all. 

But as she's turning to curl onto her side, she pauses, looking at him. Going through a brief internal wrestling match. She hasn't been able to help noticing how he tenses up sometimes when he touches her or—more commonly—when she touches him, and while she isn't sure of the reasons behind that, it's making her hesitant to ask him for this. Not that she'd offend him, but that she'd put him in an even more uncomfortable place than he's in already.

And she doesn't want to do that to him.

But she feels so lost. Even under the stars. 

“Can you…” She swallows, her throat clicking. “Can you c’mere? Can you just sit next to me?” He's chewing his lip again, his face unreadable, and despite a sharper stab of worry she pushes ahead. “Can I… put my head on your knee?” 

He stares at her, wordless. And as with her request that he sleep in the house, she's absolutely certain that she's messed this all up. She draws in a hard breath, her hands loosening and tightening into fists. “I used to fall asleep in front of the fire like that,” she says, stumbling over the words. “With Maggie, sometimes with Shawn. It just…” She trails off, helpless. Perhaps if she curls up right now and says nothing else, he’ll brush it off and will have judiciously forgotten it come morning.

But he's moving. Lifting himself and scooting closer to her. When he reaches her, it's as if he's at once placing his body at her disposal in the most detached sense and leaning sharply away from her, trying to keep as much distance between them as possible. But he's not resisting, and he stays where he is when she rests her head awkwardly on his leg. 

She doesn't know that she'd call it _comforting_. But that void in her center doesn't feel as big or as cruelly empty. Whatever else she's lost, she's not alone. 

And she's sliding rapidly toward unconsciousness, the firelight a deep brown-red through her closed lids. The escape won't last but she'll take whatever she can get and leave the rest for the day, and if she can scrape together the strength she’ll hope. 

She's almost fallen into the dark when he speaks, his voice a low, rough rumble. 

“I dunno.”

She opens her eyes, turns enough to look confusedly up at him. “Huh?” 

“How old I am.” He rolls a shoulder. He's not meeting her gaze, and the fire is bright in his eyes. “I just… I dunno. Never had a birthday. Guess it didn't feel like there was any point in countin’.” 

“…Oh.” 

She hasn't the first goddamn clue what else to say to that. She can't process it. It seems insane. How can he not _know?_  How can anyone not know something like that? How can the years of his life be so meaningless to him, that he'd allow them to slip away without marking each one? 

 _No one gave a shit_. 

She turns her head back, follows the line of his focus to the fire, blinking slowly into it. Suddenly she feels the urge to say _I’m sorry—_ but she fights it back. Some part of her senses that he wouldn't take it well, that he might interpret it as a kind of pity he wouldn't welcome. It doesn't seem right, in this moment, to remind someone of what they never had.

Not with so much loss hanging in the air like a bad smell. Not hers. Not his. A pure, refined loss unconnected to any one person, unconnected even to the farm. The world is _all_ loss now, thick with all the ghosts of what isn’t there anymore and very likely will never be again. 

Better to sleep and forget about all of it for a while. Vanish into the blessing of oblivion. 

So she does. 


	32. has you torn in-between here and running away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl and Beth embark on a fresh search for the group. Results are mixed, in ways Daryl especially doesn’t like at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shortish chapter. Next one is hopefully coming soon. 
> 
> I know a bunch of you were hoping that they would stay out there on their own for a while longer, but I trust you won’t be too disappointed when you see how the next few chapters go. 
> 
> As always, thanks so much for reading. Please know that I appreciate every single comment and they’re hugely motivating. ❤️

He has no fucking clue what to do with his body. 

This is not, in itself, a new sensation. If he's honest, he feels it in one form or another all the damn time. But in this particular case, the previous instance he's connecting it most strongly to is making him even more fantastically uncomfortable than he would be already, and that instance is the last time he slept with someone.

No. He didn't sleep, at least not until he blacked out, and he isn't certain whether or not that counts as sleep in any meaningful way. What he's thinking of is the last time he _had sex,_ the last time he _fucked,_ and as usual, for reasons he can't fathom, thinking about those words in connection to himself makes him feel like his skin is trying to wriggle off his muscles.

Thinking about them in connection to Merle, or indeed anyone else: Fine, whatever, it's a thing people do. More than once it’s happened right in front of him. No reason to make a big deal over it.

Thinking about it and himself… And then thinking about it and looking down at Beth’s head on his leg, dirty strands of hair fallen across her soot-streaked face and her brow slightly furrowed, he almost feels like he should be waking her up and apologizing to her, and also pushing her away from him, because it's just so fucking _inappropriate,_ placing her anywhere near _that_.

But he can't shake it, what it was like then and what it's like now. Lying there with—courtesy of Merle—the hooker’s drunken weight moving clumsily on top of him, trying not to look at her, trying not to look at much of anything—wasted enough that it wasn't that difficult to let his eyes unfocus and obscure the filthy interior of the trailer in a sickly blur. He remembers that she was having a difficult time getting him hard and then she was having a difficult time keeping him that way. He felt vaguely like he should be assisting her. But he didn't have any idea what to do with his legs and his arms and his hands; they felt as if they barely belonged to him. He twitched a little and then he embraced that feeling and the rest of his body no longer belonged to him either, and after that it was easier, until the world went away.

This isn't actually like that. He's still inside himself. He doesn't even feel any particular urge to flee. But he doesn't know what to _do,_ and he can't shake the suspicion that he should be doing _something,_ and he's been feeling like that for what must be hours now, since she asked him for this and he agreed to give it to her.

Insanity. And the truly insane part, the part that's knocked him the most off-balance, is that he doesn't regret that decision.

It's just so fucking weird.

The sun is coming up, hazy and dim through the trees. Might serve as his escape route, given the plan they settled on; he looks down at her again and lifts a hand to shake her—and stops, gazing at her, at those lank strands of hair lying across her cheek and the way she's tucked her limbs up against her frame, as if she's cold or as if she's trying to protect herself from something.

And his heart kind of cracks down the middle.

Girl can't catch a fucking break. Might have just lost her entire family. Whatever discomfort he's going through, it's nothing in comparison.

Might have just lost her entire family. Which is when it hits him, in a way it didn't before.

_What if they never find the others?_

_What if her family_ didn't _make it out?_

In Atlanta, even before she suggested they go to the farm, he somehow never imagined that they might stay together the way they had. They'd find Merle, and whatever happened after that was a concern for later. Then he'd been thinking they'd find her folks, and they did. In between, at the CDC, he'd been submerged in a gray numbness that couldn't conceive of a future at all.

But now he thinks about it. If they never find her family, or Rick and his people. If maybe it's a long time before they find anyone. If it's him and her out here, together, for days and weeks and perhaps even longer, only the two of them and no one else, and what rattles his chest isn't the awkward discomfort from before.

It's something very near to panic.

Never been with anyone like that, except Merle. And she's this _girl,_ and she's sweet and she's smart and capable and she clearly _likes_ him though Christ only knows why, but he straight-up _doesn't get her,_ not even a little, and being stuck with her like that—

She half turns and blinks up at him, and he comes dangerously close to letting out a yelp.

“Daryl?” Murmur slurred with sleep; she lifts a hand and pushes her hair out of her eyes, scrubs at them and winces when she touches the burned side of her face. “What's it…”

She looks faintly confused, and a new and equally horrible thought occurs to him: She doesn't remember what happened last night, and he's going to have to explain it all to her and watch her face fall apart as he does it.

But then she's pushing herself up, rubbing her eyes again and looking around—at the brightening sky, at the trees, at the bike, at the cold remains of the fire in its small circle of stones—and she shoots him a glance that's clearly making a weak attempt at being hopeful. “Guess we should get goin’?”

_Oh thank fucking God._ He grunts, shrugs, pushes up into a crouch and then to his feet, raking a hand through his hair and, he's sure, only making it stand up at even stranger angles. “Yeah, guess so.”

She looks toward the stream as she rises. “Wanna get a drink first, splash some water on my face.” She grimaces and runs a finger over her front teeth. “Man, I feel so disgustin’.”

“Yeah, you look pretty gross.” She's turning an offended expression on him, but it breaks and she returns his tiny smile when he continues: “‘m bettin’ I'd have you beat there, though.”

“Well, we can wash up a little.” Making a vain attempt to smooth her rumpled shirt and hitching up her jeans, she steps past him and starts down the slope. After a few seconds, he scoops up the crossbow and follows.

They'll find the others. They will. Surely nothing else is possible.

But Merle is whispering after him as he goes. _You simple fuckin’ idjit, doin’ this again. You remember what happened the last time you was so sure about_ findin’ _somebody? You remember how that ended?_

_Don't matter how many times life beats it into you, brother. You ain't never gonna learn._

~

But for once—lord, for once, sometimes it actually does happen—Merle is proved wrong.

And it's insane, how it happens. He can scarcely believe it, can barely credit his own eyes when they come around a bend in the road and the truck is there, chugging along in the same direction as them, beat up and robin’s-egg blue and unmistakable.

Over the last few miles, he's intuited her hope slipping away, felt her hold around his waist begin to slacken. Instantly her arms tighten, almost hard enough to hurt, and over the wind and the engine he hears her startled little cry.

Startled—and not too far from broken, and it occurs to him then to wonder how certain she actually _was_ that they would ever see her family again.

What remains of them.

He pulls up alongside their left, glances over to see Maggie staring at him in open astonishment, transmuted to wild, wide-eyed joy when she processes what she's seeing. Glenn on her other side, appearing much the same, and between them…

Daryl hasn't known Hershel long. But in that time, he's seen the man in all manner of extremity, and he's never seen him look like this.

He's half expecting them to stop, get out and properly reunite in the way he's sure they're aching to, but Maggie gestures ahead of them, mouths a word, and he understands. They're following the same rough plan he was, although he selected it without any real hope that it would turn anything up. Mostly it was a direction that he didn't have otherwise, a return to a place besides the farm that they once made a center.

_Highway_.

He nods, and follows them.

~

So yes, Merle was wrong.

No, Merle is not strictly speaking _real,_ or at least not this persistent manifestation of him. Nevertheless, he was wrong, and Daryl finally has time to reflect on it, pulled to a stop beside the truck, cutting the engine and watching Beth vault off the back of the bike and sprint around it. She just about bowls her sister over, and seconds later her father is with them, pressed against both of them, and she turns and burrows against his chest like a baby.

He has to look away. It's too much. It's too raw. It’s not that he imagines they might resent his attention, even if for some reason they gave a shit at all, but he feels as though it's not a thing for him to see. So instead he turns toward the other little clot of people, focuses on them for the first time, and his chest clenches in a way he has no idea how to unpack when Rick—haggard, exhausted, and singed—meets his eyes and gives him a nod.

The boy, too. Carol. His chest clenches harder. He's running out of places to look that don't hurt him. He settles for down at his boots when a familiar SUV pulls up and Lori leaps out followed, by T-Dog, and hurls herself into her husband’s arms.

Yeah, boots are fine. His lace has come untied. He crouches to fix that, and when he straightens up Hershel is standing in front of him, his hair silver-gold in the morning sun.

His face, for its part, is difficult to read. Daryl stands, adjusts the strap of his bow, and waits.

“Mr. Dixon,” Hershel starts, and then stops himself, appearing to revise something. “Daryl. I confess that I still haven't made up my mind as to what sort of man you truly are. I trust you can understand that. But I do know one thing.” He releases a slow breath. “This is twice now you've brought my daughter back to me, alive and safe.”

He extends his hand. Daryl gazes down at it, slightly dazed, and then—suspecting that he ought to—he takes it and allows it to shake his.

“I won't forget it,” Hershel says quietly. “That I can promise you.”

Daryl figures he should probably offer more in this situation than a grunt. But that's all he has. If Hershel is still looking for datapoints as to _what sort of man he truly is…_

In all likelihood, he won't do himself any favors by trying to seem like anything other than exactly the sort of man he happens to be.

In any case, he's saved from having to come up with something more, saved from whatever else Hershel might be about to say, by what Carol asks—which whips his attention around and directs it squarely at the empty place in this gathering. He'd sensed it, though he hadn't pinned it down.

“Did you see Andrea?”

Lori looks from her to Rick, brow furrowed. “There were walkers everywhere. I—”

“But did you see her?”

It's fortunate that he's given up trying to pretend that none of this is his problem, that he doesn't give a shit about any of these exasperating, borderline hopeless people, because it minimizes his inner turmoil when he steps forward, gesturing at the bike. “I'm gonna go back, look for her.”

He doesn't see Patricia, and he doesn't see Shane, and while he barely knew one and profoundly disliked the other, the lack of questioning on the part of the rest of them is indicative, and haven't they lost enough people? In all the days he's been with them, haven't they _lost enough?_

And Rick, goddamn him, is saying: “No.”

“We can't just _leave_ her there.”

“We don't even know she's there,” Lori murmurs, and Rick shakes his head, shoulders rigid.

So much for happy reunions.

“She isn't there. She isn't. She's somewhere else, or she's dead. There's no way to find her.”

He hadn't known what to say to Hershel, and he doesn't know what to say now—a hundred words are cramming themselves into his throat, precisely the opposite of his usual problem, and he feels his ears and cheeks flushing hot. He hasn't yet truly thrown down where Rick Grimes is concerned, hasn't had much of a need and more recently he _really_ hasn't wanted to, but suddenly he thinks he might. Because fucking hell, _he’s_ the one who's supposed to be ready to give up on looking for people, and doesn't this asshole see what's just happened? How outrageously _lucky_ they've just been? How a crowd of people, scattered to the fiery winds, has found themselves together again, where—

And he realizes where they are, spots the food scattered across the hood of the car and the words painted on the windshield, and all those useless words die on his tongue.

Glenn is speaking anyway, incredulous. “You're not even going to look for her?”

“We gotta keep moving, there'll be walkers crawling all over here.”

“I say we head east.” T-Dog is leaning on the door of the SUV. The weariness in his voice tells Daryl this isn't the first time he's pushed this idea, and the last time he tried it he wasn't successful. “Stay off the main roads.”

“The bigger the road, the more walkers.” Rick scrubs his hands over his face, turns away—and just like that, without it being explicitly stated as such, the conversation is over. “It's as good a plan as any. Everyone mount up.”

Daryl holds his ground and watches in numb disbelief as they all do exactly that. No one is really seeming to meet anyone else’s eye, something almost furtive in the way their faces are downcast as they pile into vehicles. He gets it, is the thing. He genuinely does. These people are fucking shellshocked; that they're coherent at all might, by some people, be considered remarkable.

He's not _some people,_ but he gets why.

Now they're looking for direction, _any_ direction, just like he headed for the highway. Someone in a position of authority, however come by, offers them something like that and they take it with only token resistance. Even Beth—he glances back at her, at Maggie and Hershel ushering her toward the truck, and while she does catch his gaze and doesn't shy away…

_Shellshocked_ is exactly the term he'd use for what he sees on her face. For the last twelve hours or so she’s been holding herself together by already-frayed threads, and he wasn't wrong when he heard something broken in her cry at seeing her family. No, he's not going to blame her for not putting up the kind of fight here that, going by what he's seen from her, he might have anticipated.

Even though it twists at his gut, seeing her like that. Knowing how close she was to this the whole time.

They're in their cars, engines revving. Not far away, a small cluster of walkers is shambling toward them.

He could do like he said, go back and look for Andrea. As just some asshole who can't know Andrea as well as Rick does, he could nevertheless give her the consideration Rick apparently won't. He could do that, yes—and very possibly not find her, or find her dead, and then come back here and…

Come back here and be alone.

_Coward,_ he thinks as he climbs back on the bike and trails the truck through the jam and onto the open road, a freshening morning wind tangling its cool fingers in his hair and yanking. _You useless fucking coward. Look at you, leaving someone else behind. Because there's someone else you can't keep yourself from following._

And it's not her. Or not just.

It might, in fact, be so much simpler if it was.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My headcanon of Daryl as a demisexual guy who’s had sex a few times solely out of a sense of obligation means, as someone once pointed out to me, that Daryl has never had any sex in his life that was fully, genuinely consensual, which I think is so sad. But boy does it also feel real.


	33. into the darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally reunited - mostly - the group gets back on the road. But they don't get far, and what's waiting for them is a whole new kind of problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are: THE SEASON 2 FINALE. After this (and I'll be taking a short break to focus on some other stuff for a bit) there will be an interlude chapter or two before we get to season 3, wherein I will indeed be exploring a little of what happened in the intervening time between the farm and the prison. There's still going to be a lot of skipping, but I think - and hope - that you'll appreciate some of the glimpses I have in store. And of course I'm psyched to get to season 3; anything set at the prison is always fun.
> 
> Thanks so much for being here, folks. I appreciate it endlessly. As always, lemme know what you think. ❤️

She knows she must have slept, back there in the woods with her head on Daryl’s leg. But in her memory, it doesn't feel like sleeping. It feels like a blank nothing-space, a void in her mind, darkness and perhaps even dreams of a kind but no ease. 

This feels like that. Or like she's teetering on the edge of it; she's still aware of the truck bumping and jostling around her, of her head slumped against Daddy’s strong arm and Glenn’s hip pressed against hers—it’s tight quarters in here, now—and of the brown blur of Maggie’s tousled hair and the paler green and gray blurs of the world through the windshield. Her own stink and her pain, and exhaustion like her every cell is coated in lead. 

She's aware of these things. She's also aware of the void yawning beneath her, and of how much she would like to let herself tumble into it, regardless of whether or not she’ll find any rest there. 

She's getting awfully sick of feeling like this. And she has a horrible suspicion that it's never going to stop. This is simply what life is, now. When she let the shard of glass slip through her fingers, this is what she was signing on for, and it's not as though she had no idea. 

It's not as though _he_ lied to her, made it out to be any better than it is. 

But even if she could bid it farewell for a while, switch off her awareness and return to the void, she's jerked back to full consciousness when the truck rattles and grinds to a stop and Daddy’s restraining arm tightens around her. 

She lifts her head, rubbing at her eyes and blinking. Ahead of them, the SUV has also halted, and Rick and Lori are both climbing out. Past them, Daryl has half wheeled the bike around , his expression questioning. Glenn and Maggie exchange a look—a grimly knowing one, and Beth can also do the math. 

The SUV isn't idling. Its engine is off. God only knows when it was last gassed up. They wouldn't have much in the way of other reasons to stop here, on a stretch of road that looks exactly like every other stretch of road for what she’d guess is miles in every direction. 

“C’mon.” Maggie cuts the engine, grips the shotgun at her side and gets out, and they follow.

“Running on fumes,” Rick is saying, walking— _stalking,_ really, in Daryl’s general direction. Likely, Beth thinks, because it's as good a direction as any and he doesn't feel like standing still.

Maggie shifts the gun in her hands—jumpy hands, jumpy like the rest of her, a vibration beneath a layer of brittle control. “We can't stay here.” 

“We can't all fit in one car,” Glenn says, inclining his head back at the truck. 

Rick sighs. “We’ll have to make a run for some gas in the morning.” 

Carol crosses her arms, close to hugging herself—and indeed it’s thickly clouded over and Beth realizes with a slight shudder that it's turned downright cold, unseasonably so. _Weirdly_ so. “We spend the night here?”

“I'm _freezing_.” Carl, teeth actually chattering, pressed close to Lori’s side. It's cold but not that cold—though likely it'll get even less hospitable when the sun sets, which it must be close to doing behind those foreboding clouds—and darkly, Beth thinks _shock_. 

He's kept himself together, or has seemed to. But she knows all about pretending. 

Lori rubs his shoulders. “We’ll build a fire, yeah?” 

“Yeah, well.” Daryl unslings the bow. “You go lookin’ for firewood, you stay close. I only got so many arrows.” He glances at Rick. “How you doin’ on ammo?” 

“Not enough.” 

Maggie half turns, scanning the treeline. “We can't just sit here with our asses hanging out.” 

“Watch your mouth.” And Beth has to stifle a honest-to-God snicker, because that Daddy would give a damn about _that_ right _now,_ and that he would think that was even close to the foulest language she's heard Maggie use. “Everyone stop panicking and listen to Rick.” 

_Why?_ She looks up at Daddy, frowning. Why exactly should they place so much weight on Rick’s opinion? But she's starting to get it, sense the way they're beginning to lean and why they're leaning that way, and it's winding a tense little wire around her spine. 

“Alright,” Rick says. “We set up a perimeter. In the morning we find gas and some supplies, then we keep pushing on.” 

Maggie gestures at the truck. “We've still got a bit in the tank. Glenn and I can make a run now, try to scrounge up some gas.” 

“We stay together.” Rick’s tone is beginning to wind tight as that wire inside her. “God forbid something happens and people get stranded without a car.” 

“Rick.” Glenn steps forward, gun in his hands, something tensely beseeching in the way he says the name. “We’re stranded _now_.” 

“I know it looks bad.” Rick’s focus flicks between them all, one to the other—jittery, as if it can't settle. “We've been through hell and worse. But at least we _found_ each other. I… I wasn't sure, I really wasn't. But we did. We’re together. We _keep_ it that way.” 

He pauses, jaw working, and the rest of them are silent. The solidity of Daddy’s hand on her shoulder; without meaning to she's edged closer to him, and while part of her is impatient with her seeking that kind of comfort after everything she's been through…

The rest of her is perfectly willing to tell that part to shut the hell up. 

“We’ll find shelter somewhere.” Rick exhales. “There's gotta be a place.” 

“Rick, look around.” Glenn, still tense, oddly careful, as if he's trying to reason with an especially stubborn child. “There's walkers everywhere. They're migrating or something, we can't—” 

“There's _gotta be a place._ ” Rick is speaking through his teeth now, nearly hissing—she's listening to a one-sided argument, a man fighting with a side that doesn't want to fight him, and in fact, listening to him, she's not certain they're the ones he's actually fighting with. “Not just where we hole up but where we fortify. Hunker down, pull ourselves together. Build a _life_ for each other. I know it's out there, we just have to _find_ it.” 

“Even if we do find a place,” Maggie says quietly. Quiet, and hard. “Even if we think it's safe, we can never be sure for how long. Look what happened to the farm. We fooled ourselves into thinking that was safe, how did that end?” 

“We won't make that mistake again,” Daddy says, just as quiet, twice as hard, and Beth’s gut is a cold stone. Because that's the end, what she just heard. Of what, she's not altogether certain, but something in Daddy has changed—more than one thing, so many things, but here's one more, and as she moves subtly away from him, only half meaning to, the question comes to her, and it's an awful one. 

How much more is he going to change? Is she going to recognize him, when this is finally over? 

Is she going to recognize any of them?

At last Rick sighs again, gestures at a cluster of stone ruins a few yards away—what might have been a shed or a small house. Poor protection at best. Her gut sinks lower; none of this is good. “We’ll make camp tonight, over there. Get on the road again at the break of day.” 

“What if another herd comes through?” she asks softly. Not to float dire possibilities. Simply because they are possible, and there should be some answers. “Or Randall’s group?” 

“Like I said, I found Randall.” Something in the way Daryl says it grabs her attention and holds it. His voice is low and even, but it's as tight as Rick’s, as tight as they're all feeling now, and she recognizes and remembers this for what it is: An unfinished conversation, and she can't remember who was there at the time to hear it. What Shane did. Why—she gathers, although the details remain mysterious—Shane isn't with them now. 

And there's more. She's recalling that as well: What Glenn started to say. The shock she saw lingering on his face. 

_There's something else. The walkers, they're not what we think._  

“He turned,” Daryl goes on, and he and Glenn exchange a glance dense with meaning. “But he wasn't bit.” 

Her brow furrows as she studies him. Well, that makes sense. It makes perfect sense, if he was right in what he said back on the farm, and Shane did indeed take Randall out there to execute him, and succeeded. So why is he saying it like that? Why is he speaking as though he's leading them step by step into something, as though— 

At the same instant Lori asks _how is that possible_ , she gets it, and the enormity of it makes her knees weak. 

How? How is _that_ possible? That they didn't _know_ , that somehow they didn't connect these particular dots, that this basic new fact of their existence somehow escaped their notice. It was so piercingly clear to her, so immediately—she closes her eyes and she's back in that glass-enclosed tomb reeking of piss and blood and death, and barely feet away rows of bassinets full of dead babies who refused to die, their hisses and snarls as they slowly wriggled and flailed in a revolting parody of life… And they weren't bit. She's not certain what happened to them, but she knows they weren't all bit. Couldn't have been. The only other possibility asserted itself almost instantly, and she faced it and by some miracle it didn't drive her completely insane, and she moved on. 

She'd seen things before then, that pointed in that direction. But in that moment she was finally sure, and it was finally unavoidable. 

But these people don't know. 

“Shane killed Randall,” Daryl says. “Just like he always wanted to.” 

Lori looks from him to Rick, eyes wide with confusion. “And then the herd got him?” 

Daryl says nothing. He's looking at Rick too, and when she swings her gaze in that direction she understands why.

Rick knows. The rest of them might not, but Rick does. His slumped stance, downcast eyes, the pallor of his skin—he’s pale and drained beyond even the extremity of before. He's avoiding their eyes like a child caught in the middle of doing something he knows he shouldn't,  pinned to the figurative wall by an aghast adult, and he can either admit it and take what's coming to him or evade and deny to the bitter end. 

_Oh, you idiot_ , she thinks, and what she feels is despair. _You goddamn idiot, what are you doing._  

Rick raises his eyes, and they're dull. Hopeless. “We’re all infected.” 

They all stare at him, and except for the cold gust of wind that whistles out of the trees and across the road and buffets them like a foreshadowing of winter, the world is bizarrely silent.  

“At the CDC,” he says after a moment. “Jenner told me. Whatever it is, we all carry it.” 

“How the fuck didn't you people know that?”

Going by the words, she never would have expected to hear the gentleness in Daryl’s voice that she hears now. But it's there, and it's shocking. There’s incredulity, sure, and that's only reasonable, but primary above it is that strange, sad gentleness, like someone delivering the news that a friend’s close relative has died. Like he's a hair’s breadth from saying _I'm sorry._  

They all merely look at him. All except Rick. 

He shakes his head wonderingly. “How’d you… You been awake all this time, right? And you seriously didn't know? You people.” He turns away, and she can't see his face anymore. That might be for the best. “You _people_.” 

Carol glares at Rick, her face white and awful, her hands trembling very slightly. “You never _said_ anything?”

“Would it have made a difference?”

Glenn sucks in a breath. “You knew. You knew this whole time.” 

“How could I have known for sure?” Rick sounds faintly petulant now, and Beth finds herself flushing with embarrassment—for him, for all of them, because this is bad and everything he does, everything any of them do, just keeps making it worse. “You saw how crazy that—” 

“It wasn't your call.” Glenn nods at the others. “When I found out about the walkers in the barn, I _told_ , for the good of everyone.” 

“Well,” Rick says simply. Full-on petulance. Behind it, she's sure, a significant amount of shame. Not that it does anyone any goddamn good. “I thought it was best people didn't know.” 

Glenn says nothing. None of them do. Rick looks around at them one last time and seems to her to be on the verge of offering something else. Perhaps more desperate self-justification, which no one here is prepared to buy but with which very likely no one will argue any further. Perhaps some kind of _mea culpa,_ though she doubts that profoundly.

But he doesn't do either of those things. He turns on his heel and walks away toward the trees. 

After a few long seconds, Lori follows. 

Beth watches them for a moment or two. Then she's calmly facing Daddy and Maggie and not shivering as the wind weaves between them again, and she's asking a question she already knows the answer to. 

But sometimes you just have to ask. 

“You didn't know either?” 

Maggie shakes her head. Daddy looks exhausted. Ancient. 

Beth bites her lip. It is what it is. “I knew. In Atlanta… I saw things. It was clear. I was sure. I didn't know what to do about it, but I was.” She pauses a beat. The weight in her gut has dissipated and now she's merely tired again, and yearning for the void. “So you get it now. Right? If one of us dies, no matter how it happens… You know what you gotta do.”

Before they can respond, she leaves them. She does this with no intended destination; she blinks and she's back at the truck, sitting sideways in the passenger’s seat with the door open and her legs dangling, her head in her hands. She's trying very hard not to think about what might have happened, what _almost_ happened, and what it would have been like. How they might have discovered this new natural law, when they broke into the bathroom and found her dead and not dead and ravenous, and greeting them by trying to rip them to pieces. 

Daryl would have been ready for it. He would have known what to expect. Rick probably would have as well. She can believe they would have been all right. But the rest of them? Shocked, confused, horrified into even momentary paralysis, when a fraction of one of those moments makes all the difference in the world now? 

Christ, she almost got someone killed. 

_Next time you decide to die,_ she thinks dryly—dry and frozen as the goddamn tundra— _at least_ _try not to take anyone else with you._  

~ 

Daryl knew this would fucking suck, and it does.

That phrase is totally inadequate to capture the misery of this scene, how unutterably _pathetic_ it is. Not merely the image of it, these dirty and burned and beaten-down people huddled around their meager fire and surrounded by the literal ruins of a dead world, but everything around them, everything that's gone before and everything that will doubtless come after. Because no, he has no hope to speak of. He's fresh out. Finding the others didn't bolster it, and while he couldn't say how exactly what happened back there on the road destroyed what little he had left… 

Doesn't matter. It's fucking gone. And this, for lack of any better way to put it, sucks. 

_This group is broken_ , Dale had said—the last thing Daryl ever heard him say. Rick was defiant, and now as far as he can see Rick’s hands are one of many pairs busily dismantling what still remains. Keeping secrets, telling lies of omission and of other kinds, all with the best of intentions of course, and somehow Daryl still doesn't blame him—although he thinks about Andrea and something in him seethes—but nevertheless. 

He feeds a couple branches into the fire and lifts his gaze. Rick is standing in what used to be a doorway, hand on his gun. Opposite him, on top of a small hillock, T-Dog stares out into the dark, moonlight edging his bald head and the stock of his rifle in silver. 

They're doing their feeble, helpless best, and he has no idea how this can possibly be sustainable for another week let alone a day, and he can't see any way he leaves them now. 

Not before it all finally falls apart. 

Carol shifts beside him, leans closer. “We’re not safe with him.” Her mouth is a thin line slashed across her face. “Keeping something like that from us?” The line twists into a humorless smile. “Are you even sure you want to stay with us, with someone like that acting like he's in charge?” 

_To be honest, not really_. He shakes his head. “Guy’s been through hell. Think he's doin’ whatever he can, like the rest of us.” This isn't kindness. It’s just realism. But while he's being honest… There may be something more. “He’s done alright by me.” 

“He’ll make you into his henchman,” Carol mutters. “And I'm a burden.” The hard set of her features weakens, crumples briefly into pain, and God, he wants to look away. “We deserve better.”

He wants to look away, and he doesn't. He's not even sure why he's fighting that nearly overwhelming urge, why he's not attempting to flee. It’s a particular brand of misery specific to him, looking at her while those words scrape through his head. A very few only, and he wonders vaguely how much thought she even gave to them before she said them. But they are what they are. What _they_ are, and what they might be. 

“What do you _want_?” 

He tries to sound angry. Instead he sounds like he's pleading with her, and that pain on her face returns and cuts her deeper. 

“A man of honor.” 

He does look away then. At Rick. At nothing. That word is a bad joke, the worst, and she must know it, and she's saying it anyway. Once, and not all that long ago, he might have tried to hit back at her, return pain for pain even though she's clearly in her fair share of it anyway. _Honor_ and what she's implying, using it that way. What she has the stupid audacity to ask him for. _Lady, just who in the holy fuck do you think I_ am _?_  

The most broken among them is better equipped for that than he is, or ever could be. 

“Rick has honor,” he murmurs. 

Across from him, Maggie angles herself toward Glenn, ducks her head and her voice—obviously thinking she might not be overheard but also basically not giving a shit. “I think we should take our chances.” 

“Don’t be foolish.” Hershel, sitting beside her with Beth curled into his lap. She's motionless but she's not asleep, gazing into the fire with her eyes half-lidded and blankly shining. He doesn't like that blankness. Not remotely. But it would be deeply weird, he supposes, if he scooted over to her and tried to shake her out of it. “There's no food, no fuel, no ammo.” 

A twig snaps, some indeterminable distance away—though close, too close—and he's on his feet, Carol and Glenn and Maggie following. Beth shoves herself up, her eyes wide and sharply focused. 

Not so blank after all. 

“What was that?” 

She doesn't sound as though she needs reassurance. She doesn't even sound particularly alarmed. But she sounds like she might be ready to kick up her heels and run. 

_Good_. 

He grunts, scanning the shadows beneath the trees—pointless, because purple and green firelight-blotches are dancing across his field of vision. “Could be anythin’. Raccoon, possum—” 

“A walker,” Glenn breathes. 

It didn't sound that way to him—sounded much too small, for one thing—but Carol cuts in before he can say so.

“We need to leave. I mean, what’re we waiting for?” 

Glenn’s hands tighten visibly around his gun. “Which way?” 

Maggie points. “It came from over there.” 

“Back from where we came? 

“Yeah.” 

A shadow stalks from the doorway into the firelight, the outline of the pistol appearing more like some kind of deformed growth jutting from his arm. All of it, deformed. The very air smells wrong. “The last thing we need is for everyone to go running off into the dark. We don't have the vehicles. Nobody’s traveling on foot.” 

Hershel slowly straightens, his hand on Maggie’s arm. “Don't panic.” 

“I'm not.” Maggie shoots him a terse glance. “And I'm not sitting here waiting for another herd to blow through. We need to leave, now.” 

“ _No one_ ,” Rick hisses, “is going _anywhere_.”

A long silence. It's heavy, like a dark hand pressing down on all of them, and Daryl sucks in a hard breath and find himself actually taking a step back—as if he might be about to run. As if that might be a good idea. Not because he's afraid, because he couldn't be further from that, but because this is _wrong_ and he needs to _get away._  

What's out there? What's out there for him now? 

Carol is trembling and so is her voice, but from somewhere she finds the strength to raise it. “ _Do_ something!” 

“ _I am doing something_!” 

It would be a snarl if it wasn't so strained. As it is, Carol takes her own step back, one hand flying to her mouth, and Rick hurls the words at her—at all of them—like blows. 

“I'm keeping this group together! _Alive!_ I've been doing that all along.” He pauses, half paces, turns—there's utter helplessness in the movements. Nothing strong. “I didn't ask for this.” Another pause, very short, and then he nearly lunges at them. “ _I killed my best friend_ for you people, for _Christ’s sake_!” 

So there it is. 

He regards Rick mutely, calmly, feet rooted to the ground. The thing is that he's not shocked—didn't he know already that this was the truth? Given what he'd gathered, given what must have happened, wasn't this the only real possibility? When Randall was dead. When they found out Shane lied. When it wasn't a huge leap of deduction to see why those things were the case, and what Rick and Shane were doing out there together, in a night that thickened every second like smoke. 

When he had seen, over the course of all those days, what Shane was. What he was becoming. 

There's no other way this could have ended. It was as inevitable as death itself. 

He feels himself nodding, accepting. He doesn't need a explanation or any kind of apologia, although the shock of the others is like a solid mass, but Rick is giving them all one anyway, his voice shaking every bit as much as Carol’s. Cracking at the ends. Tears there, unshed.

“You saw what he was like. How he pushed me. How he compromised us. How he _threatened_ us.” He shudders, seems to pull himself together and staggers onward, eyes darting around the circle. “He staged the whole Randall thing, led me out to put a bullet in my back. He gave me no _choice_. He was my friend but he came after me.” 

A sob splits the air open, wet and choked and immediately muffled: Carl, hiding his face against Lori’s chest as she wraps her arms around him and gazes at her husband like she barely knows him, and what's in her eyes… 

She knew already. Whether he told her, whether she figured it out for herself, she knew.

“My hands,” Rick grates. “My hands are _clean_.” 

We all, Daryl supposes numbly, tell ourselves whatever we need to in order to continue existing. 

Another long silence. They settle into it, loosening in a way that couldn't in any respect be called _relaxed_. Bone-deep weariness, and something very close to despair. There's nothing to be done about it now. What happened happened. Now here's a gaggle of frightened creatures, appearing to him more animal than human—even Beth, whose eyes have once more taken on that blank shine. She's pulling inward. He doesn't blame her. 

If anything perhaps he’s envious. 

“Maybe you people _are_ better off without me,” Rick growls, and they all jump. He ignores them. “Go ahead. I say there's a place for us, but maybe—Maybe it's just another pipe dream, maybe I'm _fooling myself_ again.” He gestures fiercely with the gun. “Why don't you go and find out yourself? Send me a postcard. Go on, there's the door. You think you can do better, let's see how far you get.” 

Nothing. 

“No takers? Fine.” Rick holsters the gun, and when he lifts his eyes they're chips of ice. Daryl has never seen him like this. Again, it comes to him that he might still run. 

No. No, he won't do anything of the kind. 

“Let's get one thing straight.” Rick bares his teeth. “You're staying, this isn't a democracy anymore.” 

~ 

He doesn't know how much later it is. The moon has fallen low behind the trees, though it's hours yet from setting. The others have slumped down into a numb kind of silence, making no noise or movement not by choice but simply because they can't. He's not positive about who's sleeping and who's not, and it doesn't matter. He doesn't even especially care. 

Rick is back in the remains of the doorway, facing the dark.

Daryl grunts, levers himself over the crumbled wall and onto the hillock where T-Dog still stands, rifle in hand. In the time he's been with them, the two of them have barely spoken, but it’s hitting him now that despite the horror of the last twenty-four hours—and even more, perhaps, despite the very obvious and very unfortunate symbol on the bike he just happens to be riding—he feels relatively comfortable with this man. As comfortable as he feels with anyone else right now. 

For a given value of etc. etc. 

“Hey.” He rummages in his pocket for his cigarettes, extracts the pack and shakes one out—the last one. Well, shit. At least that's keeping with the overall trend of things in general. “You doin’ alright?” 

T-Dog glances at him—and then it's more than a glance. It's a close study, and he sucks it up and allows T-Dog to study him, goes about the business of lighting up and taking a drag.

“That shit is gonna kill you, man.” 

He stares at T-Dog for a few seconds, cigarette dangling from his lips—and then suddenly, absurdly, he snorts a laugh that pulls an unexpected breath of smoke into his lungs and punches a cough out of him, which only makes him laugh and cough and laugh again, his vision blurring. When he can focus on T-Dog’s face, he's greeted by a wry smile. 

“Yeah, just hopin’ I live long enough for that.” 

“Amen.” 

A silence, and it extends. But unlike the other silences tonight, this one isn't so bad. Amiable, even. Daryl smokes, and T-Dog doesn't seem to care, and an owl hoots meditatively in the trees. Not far away, something rustles through the underbrush—something far too small and quick and otherwise quiet to be a walker.

Finally, T-Dog looks at him again. “How about you?” 

“Mm?” 

“You doin’ alright?” 

He shrugs. There is no single answer to that question; a negative is probably the response closest to correct, and in fact he's not sure how one answers in any other way in the world as it is now, but it's also too simple. It requires too many references to a life that no longer exists. He's not even sure what _alright_ means anymore. 

It might be time to re-evaluate a tremendous number of things. 

So he figures a shrug will do well enough.

T-Dog nods, as though as far as sufficiency goes he agrees. “Yeah, pretty much same.” He’s quiet for a beat, thoughtful, then tips his chin in Rick’s direction and when he speaks next his voice is lower. “Can't decide whether or not I should’ve taken him up on it. Y’know? Leaving.” 

Daryl shrugs again. This is, at least, one question he's answered to his own satisfaction and doesn't feel the need to revisit. But he can see why T-Dog hasn't yet come down on one side or the other.

Although T-Dog is talking about it in the past tense. Like as far as he's concerned, the choice has been made and can't be renegotiated, and all that remains is to find the sense in it. 

“Think he was right,” Daryl murmurs. “It's shit, but I dunno how any of us could do any better.” 

“Not right now, anyway.” But the way T-Dog is looking at Rick… 

This still may not hold together. Not in the end, and maybe not for more than another few days. If that. He has no idea what _this isn’t a democracy anymore_ actually means, especially not when he's unclear on how decisions were made in this group before now—other than clumsily and with a lot of pointless argument and generally to bad effect. Possibly a different approach can't be any worse and might in fact be better. But Rick. 

Rick is holding on with both hands, and those hands are shaking. 

Like the gun, when Daryl took it from him to do what Rick couldn't bear to do. 

_A man of honor._  

He shakes himself slightly. “You wanna catch forty winks? I can take over for you for a while.” 

“Nah.” T-Dog gives him another minute half-smile. _Thanks_ , for what it's worth. “I got it. If you're offering, though, I'll get you up in a few hours and you can take the graveyard shift.” 

_Graveyard_. He nearly laughs again, flicks the smoldering end of the cigarette down into the mossy dirt, and turns to make his scrabbling way back into the circle of ruins. 

He finds a corner tucked out of the way and partially obscured by a pile of rubble, mostly untouched by what's left of the firelight. It's clammy and cold and he doesn't quite get why he feels the need to take that spot, only it might be just the sense that if it's not apart from the rest of them and the pall that's settled over them, it's as close as he can reasonably get without leaving entirely. But although he's slept well enough in less comfortable circumstances, and he mitigates the worst of the chill by curling his limbs in tight and wrapping himself around the bow, sleep doesn't come. 

So at last, driven by some half-understood instinct, he pushes to his feet and heads back over to the dying fire, settles between Carol and Hershel. Carol does appear to be asleep, although Hershel isn't; he's gazing into the glow of the coals, his eyes glittering and fathoms deep. Daryl wonders if the man is even completely aware of him. 

Beth is back in Hershel's arms, her head pillowed on his thigh. Looking at her, looking and not meaning to, he's drawn suddenly and intensely back to the memory of sitting with her by a fire very much like this one, her lying close to him like she's lying close to her father now, head on his leg. She said it comforted her, and she had no reason to lie, but this seems to confirm it, and he feels an odd sense of satisfaction—that what she needed in that moment, he was able to give her, at least in some poor form. 

She did sleep, after all. 

She stirs, mutters. Even if she's sleeping, her sleep isn't sound.  But it's better than nothing, and he forgets the awkwardness he should probably feel at watching her like this, the potential issues her father might take with a man like him gazing so intently at his teenage daughter. Either no one notices or no one cares, and a little while after she subsides, he finds his eyelids growing heavier and doesn't resist their descent. 

He's so fucking tired. In that place where you keep going because it's all you can do. 

That's a choice she's made, in the clearest terms possible. That's a logic she must know very well. And she made it with no reason to believe that things would improve. 

He has no faith that tomorrow will be brighter or better, or the day after. He has, in fact, every reason to believe that it's all downhill from here. But whether he wants it to or not, tomorrow will come. 

And then the road.


End file.
